When I'm at work, I'm on a high speed connection so the threads length don't much matter but at home my connection is weaker and it takes too long to open up all the photos after about half that many (25 posts instead of 50).

I think the question might be - what kind of internet connection are you using?? How powerful is your system??

I know that in the past when I actively used my Photobucket or whatever it was account. It seemed that no matter what size of photo I put into the album, when I linked to it the photo would come out the size of a postage stamp. It seemed like the system was set up for me to dump photos in straight from the camera and then link from there. I often tweak my photos with editing software and that usually means resizing them. I think an altered photo for some reason gets compressed when you link from it - but I could be wrong (been known to happen).

I'm on a high speed connection, but 50 large photos is still slow to load. I would give up on a slow connection!

Before I upload my pix to Picasa, I compress the picture resolution from 2-3mb down to about 500-700kb. Microsoft Office Picture Manager can be used to do this and my camera software does this, too.

When I decide to embed a photo from Picasa, I can choose thumbnail, small, medium or large. I typically choose medium for posting in a forum thread.

Here's a size example:

THUMBNAIL:
{{gwi:565372}}

SMALL:
{{gwi:565374}}

MEDIUM:
{{gwi:565376}}

LARGE:
{{gwi:565378}}

I have DSL so it doesn't matter how big the threads are, they load fast. I got it cheap through Embarq.

When I link to photobucket the photos are resized for message board (unless I forget). Any smaller and a lot of the detail is lost, unfortunately.

OK, 25 sounds like a good number then. I put a thread in the Suggestions forum about starting a gallery for this forum. Please post to keep it up near the top so that Tamara will see it.

I will try to put in a smaller sized photo whenever it won't lose too much by doing so.

I think the file size of the photos has a lot to do with it, rather than just the number of photos. I resize mine in Paint Shop before posting them and typically shoot for a final file size of 40-80KB. Occasionally they end up bigger if I don't crop, but I rarely post anything over 120KB. Some of the photo files in the threads are over 500KB, and I suspect the cumulative effect of all the large files is what makes the threads take so long to load. The file size doesn't always correlate with the photo size you see on the screen either. I try not to make people scroll to see a photo, but I work on a bigger monitor at home so I frequently misjudge. I should probably pay more attention to that.

The instructions in the Gallery folders say the file size limit is 60KB. The examples Cameron posted above are roughly 8KB, 27KB, 48KB, and 140KB. If you right click on any of the photos in the threads and look at 'properties' you can get a sense for where you want to be with your pictures before posting them.

I got a lot of ribbing the first time I embedded a picture in a posting (not a GardenWeb forum). It was gargantuan.

Are people having to scroll to see my photos? I do try to remember to resize them to message board size in Photobucket before posting here, and usually crop before posting in Photobucket.

Yes, I see now, the file size has to do with how much cropping was done before the file is put into photobucket. I'll have to see what to do to get the file size down even more without losing too of the photo. I apologize, I wasn't paying attention to the size of the files. I didn't realize they were that big.

Alicia, your photos are a good screen size, even for my small monitor at work where my own photos tend to be a bit large for the screen. Yours are still bigger file sizes than mine though. From what I can see, Cameron seems to be the one with the magic balance between the two. I usually resize my pictures to 20% of what comes off the camera but would probably do well to drop that to 15%.

so is 148 kb too big for most (size wise and loading too slow)? That's really tiny memorywise, truthfully. Personally, i like that size best, but i have a big monitor. It's big enough to see easily, but still loads fast, for me at least, and is not so big it makes the threads too wide. What i'm interested in is not just the memory size, but the actual pixels, since that's how i can get stuff to the right dimensional size for the screens, and then i can match the memory size (you can save different levels of jpegs). Once i have that info i can make sure anything i post fits in those parameters. Ok, i downloaded the med and large and here are the stats. med= 400x300 pix at 72 dpi, saved at a jpeg setting of 3 (low) produces a file that is about 80-100 kb. The large one is 800x600 @ 72dpi saved at the setting of low (30 and is about 140-200 kb.

Cameron, so you let picassa do all the work, right? You upload the file size file and just post a medium sized one? Is picassa free? Maybe i'll switch from photobucket to that if it's easier.

Tammy I am trying picasa too. 148K is small, but if people are having trouble loading... I like 300K best but that's way too big, unfortunately. I don't have any trouble loading pix at all, and I have the slowest DSL Embarq offers at $25/month.

I use an old version of Paint Shop Pro at home. I'm not particularly knowledgable about all this, but when I resize to ~550x750 pixels (without making any other changes) I get file sizes of about 60-80KB, and the images still look pretty good. Maybe my camera is set to take a lower resolution image to start with. I can check the settings when I get home.

The larger files aren't a problem for me until there are lots and lots of photos on a thread, so one option would be to just keep starting new threads. Or we could lobby for a Gallery. Utah and Oklahoma have them, though it doesn't look like Utah uses theirs.

Yes, Picasa is free...a Google product. I tried Photobucket for a few years and didn't like it. Picasa, to me, is much more flexible and easier to use.

Karen I started a thread on the Suggestions forum asking for a gallery. Everyone should post who wants a gallery section.

Paint Shop Pro is supposed to be one of the best software packages for reworking photos. I know what I want for my birthday.

I also wanted to add that it's easy to get cropped close-ups down to a decent size, but not quite as easy with landscape shots.

Half the problem with loading speeds is the size of the photos. The other half is the size of the pathway the iVillage servers provide us to open the threads. That is probably why they don't provide galleries to every forum. They do have a photo gallery category before you choose Garden Forums. Way back in the dark ages when you had the choice to pay to join GardenWeb, one of the incentives to get you to pay was that only certain forums were open to the general public and only paying members could view photo galleries.

I wonder if that's true with the new server. The cost of bandwidth was probably an issue back when Spike started GardenWeb, but I'd think it would be a drop in the bucket for iVillage.

Alicia, if you're thinking about photo editing, i can't recommend photoshop elements enough. It's photoshop lite, essentially, and whole lot cheaper, at a sixth of the cost and you get lots more than a 6 th of the features. has most of the functionality, and if you ever decided you wanted to do something professionally, it isn't a learning curve to move up to photoshop (just a hit to your wallet!). It's normally about a hundred bucks, but if you watch you can find it on sale, and sometimes it's bundled with things like printers & such for free. I think when i got my camera, it had it with it, but i gave it to my mom.

I imagine iVillage has deep pockets but I also imagine they partition off segments of the bandwidth and only allow so much space to things that don't provide revenue.

Thanks Tammy!