Please stop making images BIG and much bigger than they are in reality

1. 70

   makingamarkposted 9 years ago

   In my opinion, one of the fastest ways of making a site look tacky and really poor quality is to include oversized images which are way bigger than they are in reality so they look pixelated rather than sharp.
   
   In addition, huge images do not always read well on mobile devices.
   
   I know HubPages wants our pages to look good quality - as do I. That's precisely why I am so puzzled as to the WHY the site seems to enlarge images way beyond their actual size so they become pixelated. 
   
   Why do images not upload or import at a size no more than the file size that is uploaded?  I've tried both ways and cannot find a way to import an image which is 500 pixels high at precisely that size.
   
   I think all images should be strictly limited to original pixel height and width
   
   Why are images uploaded to what appears to be a standard size space? Does this mean HubPages does not value the small or medium sized image?  I think it should - and I'd love to know how to upload smaller images (ie NOT thumbnails - just genuine small images)
   
   Or is it just yet another bug in the system at the moment?
   
   Also could we have an image size space which is SQUARE i.e. that provides scope for balance between horizontal and portrait format images

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   1. 71

      Matthew Meyerposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      The issue is that you are uploading low resolution images and there is a defined image size for the page.
      
      Remove any such images and replace them with higher resolution ones.
      We images at least 1000 pixels wide.
      http://hubpages.com/faq/#imagerequirements

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2. 93

   lisavollrathposted 9 years ago

   I can honestly say that I'm not having any trouble with the default image widths, but that could be because I shoot most of my own photography, and have the high-resolution images available for resizing.
   
   If your landscape images are being enlarged and appear pixelated in the large view, it's because your images aren't big enough. Stop using images that are smaller than the default width on the large image, and your problem will go away.
   
   If your portrait images are being enlarged until they fit the default width, simply add white space on either side of them, and turn them into a landscape image that fits the default width, but displays as portrait.

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3. 70

   makingamarkposted 9 years ago

   The problem is that HubPages does not have a suite of image sizes.
   
   I've got a very well established blog with lots of readers which has survived every Panda update without a problem and I'd never dream of loading images as big as the ones I see on HubPages.
   
   That's because:
   * large image file sizes are slower to load - which Google does not like
   * large file sizes at an adequate resolution for size overwhelm servers fast - and then servers start to misbehave......
   
   Remind you of anything which has been happening recently?
   
   If HubPages would like to start addressing its current server problems I'd very much recommend the size and resolution of all images as being a very good place to start!

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4. 70

   makingamarkposted 9 years ago

   Re. the specific size - I'm importing images from Wikipedia - I'm not about to start messing about with individual images given the number I have to reimport which were lost during the transfer from Squidoo. We're talking hundreds!

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   1. 93

      lisavollrathposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I've deleted and reuploaded every image imported from Squidoo, because I wasn't happy with the resolution when they arrived here. Given that all my how-to articles have step-by-step photography, I'm redoing hundreds of images. So, I get that part.
      
      Just because an image appears large on a site doesn't mean it's large in file size. For example, the file size of the full-sized main image in my Woodmen's Circle hub, which is from a high-res photo I took myself, is only 61KB, and I'm very happy with the quality.
      
      I think if you're using images, and you want them to look good, you have to optimize them for HubPages, rather than expecting HubPages to change its default image specs to suit your needs.

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5. 70

   makingamarkposted 9 years ago

   Or I could just post my images elsewhere and skip HubPages?
   
   I'm afraid to say my time is limited and consequently have produced images to standard sizes in the past. I'm not about to change this habit which has served me well on various websites for the last 10 years.
   
   I'm sure I would take a very different view if I was starting out from scratch and didn't already have a lot of material published elsewhere. As it is I'm still in the honeymoon phase with HubPages - and hoping that we won't be heading for an early separation.......

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6. 60

   LindaSmith1posted 9 years ago

   I have resized my pics from morguefile, etc, my own to 350 Pixels.  If they are floated to the right, they are fine.  If they are full width, they are huge and actually ugly.  As a reader, I want to read, not scroll down half a page to get past a photo image,  It does not matter what the pixels are because full width they are same size.

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   1. 70

      makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      That's my point exactly - the format for the hub takes no account whatsoever of the actual file size
      
      Plus scrolling past super big images is really boring and tends to see me leaving websites where I find them pretty fast.

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7. 0

   calculus-geometryposted 9 years ago

   I see what you mean, and it would annoy me too if my small images were scaled up and pixelated.  I looked at one of your hubs that has this problem http://makingamark.hubpages.com/hub/how … art-online A temporary solution is to float them right in the half-wide capsule for now, and then reupload larger images as you have time.  Making them half-width would sharpen them, but they could also become too tiny to see clearly for readers with bad eyes.  I don't foresee HP making a fix for this, as in the past they have really discouraged from using small images.
   
   In the case of the hub I linked to, it probably would not make much difference if you simply deleted the images, since they are not essential to the article; they are just images of text that you could write in the callout and text capsules instead.
   
   Good luck with it.

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   1. 70

      makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      That's one of the hubs which transferred and I haven't fixed yet so not really what I'm talking about. What you can see on that is the impact of the transfer process rather than the normal "insert an image into your hub" process.
      
      The small thumbnails have transferred over as very pixelated and I have no wish for them to be any bigger than they were but I do wish they were thumbnails and not pixelated.
      
      You can't fix them all straight away when you've got some 200 hubs to do and carry on as per normal with "life" - that thing we do when we aren't fixing websites! I'm now reconciled to this and the fact some look absolutely c**p right now.
      
      Incidentally those thumbnails are a "special case". I was actually talking about what I would refer to as normal smaller pics i.e. the ones which don't make a big deal out of you scrolling down a hub and reading normally without giant pics to get past.  This is a site for readers - yes?

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8. 74

   MarieLBposted 9 years ago

   I had the same prob today.  I wanted small images, it kept making them very big.

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