I get this.
The site doesn't support the HEIC format where the file is 3.6MB so I convert it to PNG which makes it 17.5MB
Is this a bug or a feature?
The site doesn't support the HEIC format where the file is 3.6MB so I convert it to PNG which makes it 17.5MB
Is this a bug or a feature?
The Forum allows much larger files than it used to, but I would say 17.5Mb is rather large!
"The maximum file size is 10Mb.
You can upload a large image provided that the file size is under 10Mb.
Large images will be resized so that they are less than 2028 x 2048.
There is a limit of 20 images per post.
You can attach files of these types: zip, txt, pdf, png, jpg, jpeg, jpe, gif."
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/help/image-uploads/
I try to keep my pictures to about 100Kb, 640x 480 for people using small displays. jpg is usually the most compact. Quick to load, also.
"The maximum file size is 10Mb.
You can upload a large image provided that the file size is under 10Mb.
Large images will be resized so that they are less than 2028 x 2048.
There is a limit of 20 images per post.
You can attach files of these types: zip, txt, pdf, png, jpg, jpeg, jpe, gif."
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/help/image-uploads/
I try to keep my pictures to about 100Kb, 640x 480 for people using small displays. jpg is usually the most compact. Quick to load, also.
Heya. I undeleted your message as this is a good topic. HEIC is going to rapidly become a talking point as newer apple devices encode to it as standard.
Currently this is a feature - attachment filesize limit is 10MB, which should be plenty. If you can't get an image under 10MB chances are the member is not using the right format for that image.
HEIC is not presently allowed because it's not (I don't think - browser compatibility list here) a well supported browser image format. But you can zip it up and upload the .zip. I'm open to allowing HEIC as a native upload, but a lot of apple users might think other people can see the images. The link I mentioned suggests there is currently zero browser support, and has a note that "While supported natively since macOS 10.13 High Sierra and iOS 11, the file format does not appear to be supported in Safari.". Therefore at present, I think it is best at to just require HEIC users to convert to JPG.
Me personally? I've changed my iPhone settings to output JPG files instead of HEIC just to make my life easier when sharing images with other people and websites (Settings->Camera->Formats->Most Compatible).
JPG is almost always a preferable choice to PNG for non-vector, non line-art. PNG is lossless and, consequently, will make enormous file sizes out of photograph style images, but will do a great job of line art images without fuzzy stuff or when you really need a pixel perfect lossless image.
Can you upload the HEIC in a zip and I'll check it out for you?
I think it would be good if the forum supported automatic HEIC to JPG conversion and will look into that for you, in the near future.
Currently this is a feature - attachment filesize limit is 10MB, which should be plenty. If you can't get an image under 10MB chances are the member is not using the right format for that image.
HEIC is not presently allowed because it's not (I don't think - browser compatibility list here) a well supported browser image format. But you can zip it up and upload the .zip. I'm open to allowing HEIC as a native upload, but a lot of apple users might think other people can see the images. The link I mentioned suggests there is currently zero browser support, and has a note that "While supported natively since macOS 10.13 High Sierra and iOS 11, the file format does not appear to be supported in Safari.". Therefore at present, I think it is best at to just require HEIC users to convert to JPG.
Me personally? I've changed my iPhone settings to output JPG files instead of HEIC just to make my life easier when sharing images with other people and websites (Settings->Camera->Formats->Most Compatible).
JPG is almost always a preferable choice to PNG for non-vector, non line-art. PNG is lossless and, consequently, will make enormous file sizes out of photograph style images, but will do a great job of line art images without fuzzy stuff or when you really need a pixel perfect lossless image.
Can you upload the HEIC in a zip and I'll check it out for you?
I think it would be good if the forum supported automatic HEIC to JPG conversion and will look into that for you, in the near future.
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I use HEIC but don't own anything by Apple. It just works in any modern web browser that isn't crap from what I've found. Except possible on Windows but there is a free codec to install.
The PNG is compressed to the tits already. The zip will be the same size. I just compressed it as a tar.xz (which also isn't (expletive) supported here! IMHO the site should support ALL archives even LZH and ARJ) and it was 17.0MB
Ditch JPG entirely LOL just kidding, but it's a crap format now. That's why I was posting a PNG. Also webp isn't supported. Why? Isn't it FOSS and easy to support? That file was 2.9MB
Why can't the forum just support all extensions? Technical limitation or a liability?
In any case, increasing the file limit to 25MB would sort the original issue. Is the site transcodes anyway, what's the problem with larger uploads?
The PNG is compressed to the tits already. The zip will be the same size. I just compressed it as a tar.xz (which also isn't (expletive) supported here! IMHO the site should support ALL archives even LZH and ARJ) and it was 17.0MB
Ditch JPG entirely LOL just kidding, but it's a crap format now. That's why I was posting a PNG. Also webp isn't supported. Why? Isn't it FOSS and easy to support? That file was 2.9MB
Why can't the forum just support all extensions? Technical limitation or a liability?
In any case, increasing the file limit to 25MB would sort the original issue. Is the site transcodes anyway, what's the problem with larger uploads?
Sorry, but no. Upgrade your hardware if you can't display larger than 640x480! Last I checked you can't go lower than 1280x1024 in Windows as a display setting with modern computers.
I mean at least you don't use 320x200. My display is 3840x2160 and 640x480 lacks any detail when cameras take 100MP photos now.
If I took that same photo raw, it would be over 100MB.
Just my opinion... I could be wrong.
And thanks @Jason for resurrecting the thread. I thought I had sorted it, but instead I uploaded a thumbnail copy of it that looks like trash.
FYI the PNG can be found here: https://disk.yandex.com/i/YPY0hjz7MwRMrg
If this doesn't work (accoujnt required?) let me know.
FYI it seems someone has make an open source decoder for HEIC if anyone is interested. https://github.com/catdad-experiments/heic-decode
I have the latest Chrome and Firefox, on OSX, and neither will open HEIC files. caniuse.com is usually pretty good with staying up to date, but let me know what browser version you find does support HEIC.
Nah I meant the HEIC. Please post the original HEIC, in a zip.
I agree. But it works, and JPG is widely supported. That's the most important thing for a public forum - wide support.
The history on that one is that webp started as a Google initiative and was only supported by Chrome. Web servers detected which browser you were using and then would have to serve webp or not serve webp of the same image, based on browser compatibility. As such, it was very much a bleeding edge technology, and not widely supported when I last looked at it. And pretty annoying for half the web who could't view .webp images that had been saved and uploaded by Chrome users.
Again wide support is the most important thing here - JPG and PNG and GIF are widely supported, and you can be sure whoever wants to look at your images will be able to.
Support has got a lot better recently though - https://caniuse.com/?search=webp
Then there is the issue of recompression - images on the forum are presently recompressed to save space. We use reSmush.it, and they only support PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP and TIF. FYI, when we moved servers I did a test and lossless re-compression of the 500,000-odd image attachments on diyAudio, and found we could save 80% of our disk space by simply doing lossless re-compression (which was done). Currently, all standard images are re-compressed (currently using reSmush.it, and I have looked at Kraken.io but not found the difference to be that great), to save storage space, as it's just the case that a lot of members aren't very good at compression optimisation. Longer term I'd like to implement our own optimiser, but there are many fish to fry before that in terms of priorities.
I'd be happy with automatic webp to something else conversation. Ultimately what I think is important is (a) the forum is exceptionally easy to use and helps with "heavy lifting" regards image compression, and (b) all the images can be viewed by everybody.
Mix of the above reasons - but mostly any new image formats require wide browser acceptance. We can allow upload of any file format, even if it doesn't display, but I think it's nice to force the end result to be viewable by anyone. If all modern OSs can view a format natively, and it works in 99% of the browsers people are using, I think it is worth considering allowing it.
And certainly I think it would be nice if the forum software gave you the option for it to auto-convert formats that aren't widely available to PNG/GIF/JPG so you don't have to muck around changing the formats.
Nah I meant the HEIC. Please post the original HEIC, in a zip.
I agree. But it works, and JPG is widely supported. That's the most important thing for a public forum - wide support.
The history on that one is that webp started as a Google initiative and was only supported by Chrome. Web servers detected which browser you were using and then would have to serve webp or not serve webp of the same image, based on browser compatibility. As such, it was very much a bleeding edge technology, and not widely supported when I last looked at it. And pretty annoying for half the web who could't view .webp images that had been saved and uploaded by Chrome users.
Again wide support is the most important thing here - JPG and PNG and GIF are widely supported, and you can be sure whoever wants to look at your images will be able to.
Support has got a lot better recently though - https://caniuse.com/?search=webp
Then there is the issue of recompression - images on the forum are presently recompressed to save space. We use reSmush.it, and they only support PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP and TIF. FYI, when we moved servers I did a test and lossless re-compression of the 500,000-odd image attachments on diyAudio, and found we could save 80% of our disk space by simply doing lossless re-compression (which was done). Currently, all standard images are re-compressed (currently using reSmush.it, and I have looked at Kraken.io but not found the difference to be that great), to save storage space, as it's just the case that a lot of members aren't very good at compression optimisation. Longer term I'd like to implement our own optimiser, but there are many fish to fry before that in terms of priorities.
I'd be happy with automatic webp to something else conversation. Ultimately what I think is important is (a) the forum is exceptionally easy to use and helps with "heavy lifting" regards image compression, and (b) all the images can be viewed by everybody.
Mix of the above reasons - but mostly any new image formats require wide browser acceptance. We can allow upload of any file format, even if it doesn't display, but I think it's nice to force the end result to be viewable by anyone. If all modern OSs can view a format natively, and it works in 99% of the browsers people are using, I think it is worth considering allowing it.
And certainly I think it would be nice if the forum software gave you the option for it to auto-convert formats that aren't widely available to PNG/GIF/JPG so you don't have to muck around changing the formats.
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Seems simple to me. Use JPEG for photos on the web. It is currently the best format for that. And there is no need at all for images of 10 meg on an online forum.
Literally every browser I've ever installed unless there's magic in the background that integrates conversion (Yandex saves an HEIC, but when I copy the image, the forum takes a PNG).
I see. Gimme a moment.
It certainly is NOT the best format. That's like saying MFM is the best HDD tech IMHO.
There are multiple free formats supported by all modern systems and free to use and implement that work far better than JPG. JPG is obsolete IMHO and should be depreciated.
Nobody uses GIF anymore, either.
Nope. JPEG is just fine if you do it right. That isn’t difficult. I’ve done multiple A/B tests with JPEG TIFF and ping with industry experts. They could not tell the difference unless I pointed it out.
As a final format, JPEG is currently the all around best for photos in web use. It’s not a format for editing, but end of the line it works as well as needed.
As a final format, JPEG is currently the all around best for photos in web use. It’s not a format for editing, but end of the line it works as well as needed.
I was mostly talking about archive formats but I guess you could just *** tar.xz tar.bz2 and every other archive extension manually to a list somewhere in XF LOL
At least the forum takes uncompressed .tar
Compare it to raw and HEIC... Then look at the file sizes... TIFF is only used by ancient fax machines now, PNG is still used more than JPG I find. After all it is called "Portable Network Graphic" LOL
I mean for high quality anyway. JPG is still fine for thumbnails but there's a reason nobody releases a book in JPG. The compression turns it into trash or the file is huge... Just my two cents 🙂
I can't comment on what magic might be occuring on your computer.
But I can tell you that the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox don't support HEIC.
Please let me know what version of what browser you're using, and I'll look it up. You might have a 3rd party extension installed, or some other magic going on. Likely magic that most people don't have installed.
I tried to open your .zip file, but on OSX Monterray it reported that it was not a valid .zip file. Please try another program to stick it in a .zip archive.
PNG and JPG are wildly different compression algorithms that address completely different problems. PNG is a lossless format, your choice of 256 or 16M colors (so you can save twice the byte word length and thus size), and has alpha transparency. It does a horrible job of compressing photographs, and an amazing job of compressing line art, or images with large parts containing the same color.
JPG has no transparency, but does a great job of tricking the eye into thinking a photograph is of similar quality, and you have a choice of 1-100% image quality, with a corresponding increase in size, which is totally up to you. A JPG saved with 100% quality will be very large, but also very close to the original.
Different tools for different jobs, and both very powerful in the hands of the right operator.
I don't know much about HEIC, but from a glance, it's a proprietary Apple format, and can do what JPG does in half the size while retaining the same image quality. Note "same image quality". It's not that JPG images look bad, or don't look bad, they are produced to a quality setting chosen by the operator. HEIC will give you a smaller file size for the same visual end result appearance.
I agree. Looks like HEIC support is a long way away: https://caniuse.com/?search=heic
As for webp, currently it looks like it's good now for everything other than IE11: https://caniuse.com/?search=webp
Chrome for Android supports it as of Oct 27, 2022. Firefox for Android Oct 18, 2022. All very very recent updates. Give it a little more time on the vine and I'm happy to consider adding native support for .webp.
Just had a look at our last month's browser stats in Google Analytics. As an example, Safari supports webp from 16 onwards, and only 50.1% of Safari users are on 16+. So.. yeah.
Koda - I know you are using nightly early-adopter builds on an alternative linux operating system that until today I had never heard of. As such you are probably in the top 1% of the most technologically advanced users of this website, in terms of your operating system platform and general early adoption.
I completely agree with you that webp and HEIC are better formats than the old ones - they use less space to achieve the same result. And I do appreciate you must find this data about slow adoption of new browsers very frustrating, but as the operator of a global forum that has a very wide range of users on a very wide range of technologies, many of whom are getting older and not so quick on the draw with updating their OS and browsers, I hope this helps you understand what things are so, at least for now.
BTW I wonder if your .zip program is so far advanced it's not backwards compatible with OSX's .zip decompressor? Perhaps try looking for some legacy / compatibility settings in it.
Koda - I know you are using nightly early-adopter builds on an alternative linux operating system that until today I had never heard of. As such you are probably in the top 1% of the most technologically advanced users of this website, in terms of your operating system platform and general early adoption.
I completely agree with you that webp and HEIC are better formats than the old ones - they use less space to achieve the same result. And I do appreciate you must find this data about slow adoption of new browsers very frustrating, but as the operator of a global forum that has a very wide range of users on a very wide range of technologies, many of whom are getting older and not so quick on the draw with updating their OS and browsers, I hope this helps you understand what things are so, at least for now.
BTW I wonder if your .zip program is so far advanced it's not backwards compatible with OSX's .zip decompressor? Perhaps try looking for some legacy / compatibility settings in it.
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