trouble with upload of pics

[Crawldaddy]

not sure if this is the correct forum.. I uploaded one pic with no problem, but cant seem to load the next pic from the same camera on the same setting.

"The file that you have tried to attach is too big. The maximum size is 3197152 bytes."

I dont understand this, the previous pic that loaded couldnt have been any smaller in bytes. Anyone know what I need to do?

[angrysparrow]

The last pic you uploaded was 2592x1944 pixels at 2.74 megabytes. Try resizing your pictures to a smaller size, perhaps around 1024 pixels wide for forum use.

[GrizzlyAdams]

not sure if this is the correct forum.. I uploaded one pic with no problem, but cant seem to load the next pic from the same camera on the same setting.

Quick primer on digital cameras...
A "pixel" is a color light intensity, recorded as 3 numbers, the intensities in each of three primary colors. An intensity number usually requires 1 byte, so a pixel is 3 bytes.

The raw storage you need for an NxM pictures is at least 3xNxM bytes. At your setting of 2592x1944 pixel image, that comes out to be over 15 million bytes. But what was uploaded was only 2.74 million bytes, how can this be???

You are almost surely getting .jpg (or .JPG or .JPEG) files off your camera. This means your camera is automatically doing "data compression" that takes the 15 million bytes and squeezes them down into something smaller. How can it do this? Regions of your picture have color intensities that don't change very much, e.g., splotches of black or white. So a smart system can represent regions of image much larger than one pixel with a code that implies some portion of the image ought to have _this_ intensity.

Your camera will have a setting that controls how aggressive the data compression is. "High quality" means that only regions that have intensities that are very very much alike will compress. Lower quality means that the algorithm with take a region with intensities are are different---but similar---and represent them with one intensity, e.g., the average intensity over that region.

The punch line : the size of the .jpg file you get from your camera depends on the compression, which depends on the image. Two pictures will generally not take up the same size in memory. And that's why your first one loaded but the second one didn't.

Grizz

[Crawldaddy]

thanx very much for taking the time and trouble to explain all this to me. I guess in layman's terms I need to get a smaller camera so the pixels arent so big.

[Ramblinrev]

It would be cheaper to get a freebie program and resize the images. Irfanview does a good job as well as others that are available. Changing the format may work as well.

[angrysparrow]

Ramblinrev is right...there's no need to get a new camera at all. You just need to resize the images to smaller dimensions.

[Just Jeff]

I bet your camera has at least one setting that affects file size...it'll have choiced like "high quality" and "average", or it'll have choices like "fine" and "superfine" or something like that. Choose the middle or lower one and it may be small enough to upload here, depending on your camera.

If you're using windows, you may already have a compression program on there. Photo Manager can do it.