Hi! I have recently tried to upload some hi resolution family photos

Question

The resolution of the old photos I have tried to upload to Wikitree is too high. I need a Wikitree app which will automatically lower the resolution so that the photos can be uploaded to Wikitree. Any suggestions? I don't wish to have to rescan the photo's it would be too time consuming.

Answer 1

Hi Wes.  I think it's still true that WikiTree doesn't have any photo editing tools, so you'll need to use your own photo editing software.  Most software should have a way to let you resize a photo and skinny down the file size without rescanning.  The site's size limit is 10 MB, which includes any metadata tagging along with the photo.

Answer 2

Wes, If you are working on a PC, there is a generic Paint program that will work.

Open Paint (use search field) then open your picture.  You can resize it, crop it, and save it again as "Picture 2.jpg". 

I have resized my pictures down to 25% and they look fine, but you will have to experiment.

Answer 3

Give this a shot: https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/harris5439/images/

Tested on:

• 130.45 MB .gif, returned a 0.80 MB .jpeg
• 19.83 MB .png, returned a 3.81 MB .jpeg
• 17.20 MB .png, returned a 3.31 MB .jpeg
• 12.95 MB .jpg, returned a 3.72 MB .jpeg

Comments

Steven, are there any options or controls for this hiding somewhere that would let you tell it what you want?  I just tried it, and it resized a 4.56 MB .jpg to a 5.49 MB .jpg.

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Tech junk first:

If the original 4.56 MB JPG was already efficiently compressed (and I am assuming it was), it may have been close to an optimal balance between size and quality specific to its content and resolution. Applying compression again can paradoxically increase the file size since I am most likely introducing a higher quality setting. This occurs because re-encoding an already compressed image to a higher compression setting can introduce new artifacts that the compression algorithm attempts to preserve, thus increasing the file size.

Question:

This was primarily made so I could compress large files (over 10 MB) like the OP is encountering, allowing me to upload them to WikiTree.

It wasn't really designed for files already under 10 MB. But if you gave me details on what controls you wanted to see, and what the expected output would be, I could probably introduce those for you.

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I just grabbed a photo from the files at random.  My gut reaction is that if this was just developed to be a simple tool for WikiTreers to reduce file sizes that the system won't accept, then it's probably best to leave it in simple and straightforward form.  If you start trying to redesign to a bunch of performance specs, you'll add a lot of complexity and probably be reinventing the wheel, since there are already a lot of options in existing photo editing software.