Character Image Size

[IndieRockLance]

Is there any hope in the maximum size for character images being bumped? I don't know about anyone else, but I'm having a hell of a hard time getting most 300px width images down to around 19.2k so the thing will take it. A 20k limit is fine for 100px covers but this is turning into a massive pain in the ass.

And, honestly, I don't think it takes a whole lot more than that. I would place it around 50k, unless I'm wrong about the maximum suggested width of the image being 300px.

[Darth Kramer]

I try to have roughly a 150 x 200 pixel image for characters.

[IndieRockLance]

I try to have roughly a 150 x 200 pixel image for characters.

I don't know, I figure if the text is going to be shoved way over to the side, then it looks kind of ridiculous to have a picture that doesn't take advantage of the space it's given.

Or, in short: This looks much better than this.

[DarthSkeptical]

Is there any hope in the maximum size for character images being bumped? I don't know about anyone else, but I'm having a hell of a hard time getting most 300px width images down to around 19.2k so the thing will take it. A 20k limit is fine for 100px covers but this is turning into a massive pain in the ass.

And, honestly, I don't think it takes a whole lot more than that. I would place it around 50k, unless I'm wrong about the maximum suggested width of the image being 300px.

I'd refer you to my earlier tutorial on cover images, also in this part of the forum. The principle is exactly the same. I've put in a TON of character images. and have had no difficulty getting them to come in under 20k.

As a personal thing, though, 300px is a bit too wide when you've got a lot of text on the character, cause it really makes ya have to scroll a lot more than is necessary. 200 or 250 is really a bit better, when you consider someone's eventually gonna write an article that goes with it. But, every situation's a bit different. Sometimes, with more obscure characters, you can't be choosy about the orientation of the picture, and you have to keep it at 300-350px, because it's oriented more horizontally than vertically.

In any case, hittin' the 20k mark is a pretty painless thing with Photoshop. The dimensions of the object aren't nearly so determinative for size as the quality of the image saved. We're not looking to create images here that can be downloaded then blown up 100x without pixellating. We're just looking to have an image that clearly identifies a character on the screen. Even the lowest quality images generally do that. Just SAVE FOR WEB, fiddle with the quality dial, and you'll be good to go.

[IndieRockLance]

I'd refer you to my earlier tutorial on cover images, also in this part of the forum. The principle is exactly the same. I've put in a TON of character images. and have had no difficulty getting them to come in under 20k.

As a personal thing, though, 300px is a bit too wide when you've got a lot of text on the character, cause it really makes ya have to scroll a lot more than is necessary. 200 or 250 is really a bit better, when you consider someone's eventually gonna write an article that goes with it. But, every situation's a bit different. Sometimes, with more obscure characters, you can't be choosy about the orientation of the picture, and you have to keep it at 300-350px, because it's oriented more horizontally than vertically.

In any case, hittin' the 20k mark is a pretty painless thing with Photoshop. The dimensions of the object aren't nearly so determinative for size as the quality of the image saved. We're not looking to create images here that can be downloaded then blown up 100x without pixellating. We're just looking to have an image that clearly identifies a character on the screen. Even the lowest quality images generally do that. Just SAVE FOR WEB, fiddle with the quality dial, and you'll be good to go.

I've got covers down to a science, believe me. I'm credited for 1700+ and have actually uploaded even more since I've been going around fixing all the crappy covers people did for the various Ultimate titles as well as replacing the new books that were obviously scanned haphazardly with a better version. I was actually going to write something up because I was getting tired of cleaning up and not getting credit for it, although I have to admit mine look pretty good. So, it's not that being a problem, it's that I don't like having to compromise image clarity because of an extremely low limit (which you have to admit that 20k is a very low limit that doesn't allow for dynamic pictures).

Just for the sake of argument, here's a picture I was struggling with earlier before giving up. It's a cropped out picture on Ultimate Carnage from Ultimate Spider-Man #62. It's resized at 250px width, as a compromise. Since it's the source picture, I saved it at 80 quality.


So, from that I would like to get the best quality within reason. So, let's say that I disregard the limit and set my own limit at 40k. The picture on the left is set at 60 quality and the picture on the right follows the limit and is at 23.



The difference is clear and is definite enough that I would rather go without a picture at all than to have to settle with a fuzzy, pixilated version. So, why not double the maximum size for the overall good of the site? I'm sure the point is gotten across, but it looks sloppy and when all the images are as sloppy or pixilated, it reflects poorly on the site as a whole.

Also, I don't know if it's just me because I use Firefox, but the column where the text is seems to be fixed so that I already have to scroll down a great deal when there's a lot of information. So, the size of the image has no bearring on the text being harder to read, that sounds more like a fault in how the page itself is set up. You'd have a point if it were like Wikipedia where the image is off to the side, but it's also surrounded by text, but it doesn't seem to be this way.

[DarthSkeptical]

I think that little demonstration proves my point. To the average person, looking quickly at a reasonable distance from their monitors, there's no difference between those images. They all equally well identify the character. Can you tell that the one that fits the size requirements is of a slightly lower quality? Yes, but only if you really look and ONLY because you have the others to compare against it.

It's not that the lower quality one is BAD; it's that it looks slightly less good than the other two. If you don't have the other two to look at, you don't notice at all. A reasonable person, with no connection to the picture on the bottom right, would not, in short, describe it as you have: it's not "fuzzy and pixellated".

Look, I'll admit that it would be nice if the limit were expanded--for me, it would be a huge deal if the limit were at least pushed to 21K, just so we could truly have a 20K limit--but I don't think it's strictly necessary in order to accomplish the simple goal of giving people an idea of what the character looks like. The point is not, I think, to deliver something people can really study, but just something that lets you say, "Oh, okay, I know that guy."