Image sizes on Steemit - bitching and ranting 👺
which has nothing to do with the rest of the story:
![70789c70de617ea3eb6b8c5d0b59ee9b96e9240a.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmW3dfnRM3pzBmhCE7DoDsng1B3ovr4R5gNM8Zx4eTwtZe/70789c70de617ea3eb6b8c5d0b59ee9b96e9240a.jpg)
why not? fooling around with selfies, and then also cranking it through the Deep Dream generator.
No drugs were consumed during this process!
Image sizes on Steemit - bitching and ranting
I've been sick, so not much activity lately. I had this discussion already with @gric when I first noticed this about image size five days ago, in a private conversation on Facebook messenger.
AND THIS IS MY RANT:
One thing I had noticed already 5 days ago is that
Steemit is reducing uploaded images to 640px!
https://steemit.com/artzone/@thermoplastic/fomorii-king-and-his-queen
That is when I first used external image links to zoom.
This is ridiculous: they are even smaller than those in the stone-age time of the internet, when most sites would only let you upload 800px and less than 200KB.
I tested on Bescouted, and at least on there, they are over 1400px, such as my last post which was cross-posted on Steemit - that particular image is 1440x1080
This is the post how it appears on Steemit:
I figured a run-around is to link to a image for ZOOM hosted elsewhere - in my case on Flickr, where I found a way to even pick which size I wanted to show, right up to original size.
You can check it out on my last post, sort of a test run (originally posted on Bescouted to test their size) and cross-posted on Steemit.
Here is the ZOOM on Flickr of the above image.
But the most ridiculous image on Steemit is the panorama I added: at 640px you can barely see it. I went sort of over board by linking the ZOOM to the full-size image on Flickr.
Check it out:
Anyway:
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
Save bandwidth?
If so, then why not limit the file size of the image upload, but not the actual pixel size! For reasons of file size and page loading, I had always reduced the file size of my images to medium in Photoshop, so a 1600 or even a 2200 pixel image is no much more than 300 to 400KB in size, and still good to look at on the computer (but not optimal for printing).
I would urge the ones responsible for this ridiculous change that has been snuck up on us only recently, to reconsider, and take in consideration my suggestion about file size (instead of image pixel size).
This, I might add, is especially annoying to artists and serious photographers!
If this is not corrected, I predict that many in the creative community would abandon Steemit. The overall quality of the platform would definitely suffer.
I would appreciate your comments.
Visit my website
▼
![ART OF THE MYSTIC OTTO RAPP-web350.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVzmXv6ZomA2G8wHhPtcwe8rmA3Kun2vFMFxufUPRK6ww/ART%20OF%20THE%20MYSTIC%20OTTO%20RAPP-web350.jpg)
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/http://2597378-332654215428368134.preview.editmysite.com/uploads/2/5/9/7/2597378/steemit-text_1_orig.jpg)
![13122819_875562545923591_2724879621137156873_o-crp500sm.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdR5fvNrfDdjxq8nbPzqupGNjMd1BFKeDpuZXUqwnbENJ/13122819_875562545923591_2724879621137156873_o-crp500sm.jpg)
at the Ernst Fuchs Museum
Pleeeaaase everybody, this is just steemit. Switch to steempeak or alike. Steemit as a platform is dead, but that doesn't mean steem and what's built on top of it are dead.
steempeak has a really nice UI and stores pictures in hi res (I think it's limited to up to 4 a day...).
the worst about steemitimages (besides the size) is the terrible compression!
Busy.org is fine - I just checked my posts on there.
I just had a look at Steempeak - looks promising!
It certainly would also be a alternative.
The odd time I had hosted images for use on Steemit on Steempix.com - like this one: https://cdn.steempix.com/i/p5lMKj3kYDV.jpg
Yeah, I publish pretty much all of my posts using esteem surfer. I like steempeak as well. For some reason I still use steemit.com to browse content. I don't really know why.
Nostalgia ?
;)
Hehe.. maybe
Don't waste your time Otto, nobody will listen. Steemit Inc. is in decline and most of the big accounts are only interested in keeping the Status Quo so they can sell their voting power to bidbots. This blockchain is getting eaten up by greed, blindness and stupidity.
It was a short life, and we expected so much from it! The "Steemit Camelot" did not last very long.
You nailed it!
Amen to that
I sure hope that things can turn around in here @gric & @thermoplastic. I stopped using bidbots completely about a month ago to vote my own content. Of course I never really abused them that much.
I have to admit, I used smartsteem to sell votes for the first time the other day when I had to be away from steem for a while. When I came back, I felt really dirty. I looked through some of the stuff that I 'auto-voted' for and thought to myself.. Man, I never would have voted for that rubbish.
I have disabled it and won't be doing that again. But of course that is because I have a conscience - and I actually want Steem to succeed. I think that bots are going to have to be banned full stop if these problems are ever to be resolved.
Maybe it would be nice if the image hoster of steemit would add some compression like https://tinypng.com/ does, it is unnoticeable and shrinks files very small.
excellent tip -while I reduce my file sizes in Photoshop myself, maybe tinypng can do it even better. I will give it a try!
I noticed it the day it happened and mentioned it to a few others. The explanation that they are saving money on storage came later. However, they should have taken into account how the digital artists might react.
how any artist and photographer reacts - the main story for them is the image, and it must be seen properly to be appreciated. Often I have to open the full view to actually realize how good a work is - full screen view is the best.
It may not affect writers as much.
Exactly!
Your balance is below $0.3. Your account is running low and should be replenished. You have roughly 10 more @dustsweeper votes. Check out the Dustsweeper FAQ here: https://steemit.com/dustsweeper/@dustsweeper/dustsweeper-faq
They are going cheap on storage and bandwidth. Luckly this has nothing to do with the STEEM blockchain, but only with their front end app. The blockchain only stores a link to the image, and there are plenty of alternatives to interact with it.
Posted using Partiko Android
yes, true - this I found out about checking my account on Busy.org
I second that! It's especially annoying, that one always has to add <center-tags> around an image, because it's shrinked smaller than the display width of the text area.
yes, - I've gotten into the habit of adding a <center-tag> already before this happened. There are other bitches I have, such as not being able to add a <target-blank> to open a link in a new tab. Do they want you to be re-directed (i.e. leave) Steemit in order to go to a link? I certainly don't want this on my websites, and unless I override it, my blogs automatically open links in a separate tab. BTW, Busy.org automatically opens a separate tab, but there is a warning you have to click on before you get to an external site. Just checking Busy now, it seems that they do display the images in the correct size (as uploaded). Example: Fear of Flying on Busy (just click the image and then the +zoom), and from the same post on Steemit (this was posted after their hare-brained idea of limiting image sizes): Fear of Flying - so it is a good idea to check out your Steemit posts on Busy.org
Thanks for the tip about busy.org!
It looks like they use ipfs to store the images, instead of the amazon s3 cloud (steemitimages is using), which makes a lot of sense for a decentralized service on top of the steem blockchain.
Hopefully they run their own ipfs node(s). Otherwise the images might disappear in the future (when nobody seeds them anymore). This happened to videos uploaded to dTube in the beginning...
It seems like a good and well established alternative - and you can do your posting right on there, it cross-posts to Steemit.
Looking at your photo measels come to my mind...as about the size issue you're writing about I can only agree with you. May be one should make the bitcoins a bit smaller too...
well, the Bitcoin (and Steem) have shrunk already, and maybe that is the plan for Steemit: shrink it until it fits into a thimble. What's next? A word count?
This whole issue takes me back to the pre Y2K era of primitive computers. I remember "huddling in the dark" at work on the railway in Canada when we could not process electronic train orders etc. We were prepared, switching to written orders and we had generators on standby as well (which were not necessary after all).
I don't know if this helps at all, but I've always resized my images by adding, for example..
https://steemitimages.com/407x271/
on the front of the url.
Examples...
Original..
![ntopaz-image-0](http s://artisteem.io/media/6fadc493-9f8d-46dd-9284-d32be1d99514)
Altered..
![ntopaz-image-0](http s://steemitimages.com/407x271/http s://artisteem.io/media/6fadc493-9f8d-46dd-9284-d32be1d99514)
Then I adjust it (the pixel size)to the particular size I want. Doesn't help with the picture quality, but I can get a larger or smaller picture in my post. It only shrinks my pic's in comments. I have no luck getting a larger picture in comments using this method.
I apologize in advance is what I say here is mute. If so just ignore ;-}
Ya, it seems you're right. The link that steemimages gives us, when we drag and drop is dynamic, we can change the link up to the original size that we uploaded. Still weird but usable
Sounds like they are actually resizing it. busy.org either css resizes it or saves a downsized version and if you click on it, will open the full size in an overlay for you. Steempeak (the one I use most regularly) has a less intuitive right click view image kinda setup but full image is still nondestructively accessible.
I haven't used steemit for a while, people keep going on about how it's the flagship product and all but I have vague notion that they basically only had a website for people to sign up on because they needed one at the time (being the one and only and all) and really wanted other people to do the front end stuff while they concentrated on back end stuff.
yes, I had a look at Steempeak. By now I have a ton of alternate sites on the Steemit blockchain. Slowly loosing overview.
Someone put this to my attention also, i would also recomend 2000's pxs biggest side and i already resize / compress for internet usually.
as I mentioned this in the post, I do this already. This 2000px image is originally over 3 MB at full resolution (12 High). Saved as a Medium 5 it is 424 KB at no visible loss:
at 100% there is no pixelation, and no discernible difference in color.
This is the image on Flickr, at 2000px and medium resolution
..................................... ▲ open, then mouse-click + to zoom