Internet connections worldwide are becoming faster and faster and it is possible to transfer large amounts of data in no time at all but still this does not mean that transferring large files is OK. For instance, many people access the Net from mobile devices or use plain old dialup and you can bet that they are not happy when a large image file comes their way.
But even if you know that your recipients do not mind receiving 2-3MB image files, in many cases it just not necessary to send a file that large, when it will be viewed at 1/10 of its size because this is what fits onscreen. For instance, most modern digital cameras produce images that are 3,000 or more pixels wide, while the average screen has 1024 (or even less pixels), so if you send such a file, the recipient will have to view it zoomed to 25 or 33% of its original sizes. This is just waisting your time and bandwidth. Sure, you can use FTP to upload the files but not many people do it. Instead, the most common ways of transmitting and displaying large images is via email and image galleries.
Sending large images via e-mail is not a great idea. First, it takes ages to attach the image. Second, most e-mail services have limits for the size of the attachment and sometimes these limits (i.e 1MB per attachment) are lower than the size of the smallest image in your collection. Third, just imagine the impatient recipient, waiting for hours to download your attachments.
Sending/receiving large images over e-mail is unpleasant but viewing an image gallery with large images is really irritating. Imagine a page with 50 or more images, each of them being over 1MB. This is 50MB altogether. Even if your connection is fast, it can take 5 or more minutes till the images load in your browser! Not many people are that calm to wait so long! And the most likely thing they will do is leave your page and go somewhere else.
So, as with many things in life, with large image files it is not the bigger the better. Yes, there are cases when the quality of an image file is negatively impacted when its size is decreased (i.e. for images that are to be printed) but in 90% of the cases, even if there is a decrease in quality, it is either unnoticeable to the human eye, or can be neglected in the name of speed.
If we return to the digital camera example, the wisest thing to do with your image files is to downsize them first and then send the smaller files. There are many ways to downsize an image without impacting its quality. Some of the approaches to downsizing a file are converting it to another image format, reducing the DPI (dots per inch) or just reducing its width and height.
You can use special software products, for instance ImageConverterPlus to do the job for you. Among the many features it has, ImageConverterPlus allows to resize images, to decrease their DPI and to convert from one image format to another. You can use any of the three operations to downsize a large image file,while preserving the quality of the image. Why waste time and bandwidth, when there are more elegant ways to get the job done?
Author: Ada Ivanova