Photo Gallery Forums

My question is thru lightroom via ftp - during upload - what is your recommended upload size so if someone wants to purchase a picture that there is enough resolution for a good print. If you say as big as you can make them, then when a customer or user visits the website and views a picture is there a way to limit the download size that he or she must wait for prior to seeing the picture as some people may not have very fast internet downloads. I am concerned as to how this is optimized for selling and viewing purposes.

Thanks,

Sam

First of all, let's clear some aspects about the "purchase" ... Are you using Fotomoto? ... or perhaps you have some manual system for purchasing photos on your website? Normally, the pictures you have up for viewing should be optimized 100% in regards to viewing from the web, and then you should have much larger high-res images available to provide for the purchase. This is in fact how Fotomoto works -> All images are viewed at a normal web size, but when someone makes a purchase, you will be requested to upload the high-res version of the image. For example something like this:

Web: 1024px or 1280px long images, is a good compromise for the web.
Download/Purchase: Offering the full original size for those who purchase is the norm. Having your images available at 4000px or higher, and usually several MB file size. These files are not optimal to have displayed directly in the gallery though, simply because they take too long to load, too mumch memory, and don't have any benefit since they must scale down anyway.

So, unless I missed some details, for your main gallery you should simply focus on having a balanced optimal size suited in general for the web. I would recommend 1280 px long size ... This is nice and big for modern devices and internet connections. Some related post:
viewtopic.php?p=32569#p32569
viewtopic.php?p=22271#p22271 (... but from 2010, and the times are changing)

Thanks for the response. I just recently found out that the fotomoto site will require my upload of the original picture and that then made me realize just a decent size (large) should be placed on the website for viewing purposes. I was under the impression that fotomoto used the image that I uploaded to the web server where my website resides, but I see now how it works.

Im still on the fence with how I want to keep my site. Either imagevue or smugmug. Imagevue allows me to actually use my web server. Smugmug is just the opposite and I use there servers. My smugmug pictures are used as they are when purchased and no special upload is needed after purchase as the image is already uploaded to there servers and ready for print thru many different developers like easy print or bay photo. But smugmug is pretty costly per year especially with the increase they just recently did. All these pros and cons...geezz talk about decisions. I love imagevue but I not a big fan of fotomoto yet. I will figure it out one day and stick to one or the other. You have all done a very nice job from when you all started out with imagevue and your earlier versions - you all have really improved these versions from a long time ago and they look beautiful and well developed. Keep up the good work.

Thanks,

Sam

chitownsam.com

Thanks. Imagevue is for sure focused on the portfolio and viewing aspect of a gallery, and does not really go in depth when it comes to e-commerce or other features that can be included in hosted services like smugmug.