Size of image in photoblog?

dinneenp

Hi,
My photoblog had all images imported from my flickr account...however the images are only imported at a max size of 500 width.
Images look fine but a bit small. The nice thing with this Monotone theme is that it creates the surrounding colour automatically.

I tired loading the image from my laptop so that that appear larger...but the issue here is that it's 'too big' and you lose the surrounding border...

Which do you think is better- the large or small image structure?

I'm almost wrecking my head trying to find the perfect style for a photoblog....


Cheers,
Pa

Hugh_C

I'm currently doing 600 on the longest side

kjt

I find 800px on the largest side is best...

AnCatDubh

There's probably no perfect answer. I think you need to consider your target audience - if you have web analytics of any sort running it will probably give you screen resolution statistics of visitors to your site. If you run with 800px on the longest side you are assuming a minimum screen resolution of your user of 800 x 800 such that your image whether in portrait or landscape will show correctly without scrolling (also need to allow for header / footer text). Screens are usually not square so you are considering normal resolutions such as of 800 x 600 for example. Remember if 800 x 600 is your target screen then your 800px on the longest side is ok for landscape oriented images but not portrait (due to the 600) - however if you were using a 600px on the longest side then it would be fine on an 800x600 display. For 800px on longest side you are assuming perhaps a 1024 x 768 display i.e. the dimensions are bigger on the horizontal and vertical than your guide size (800px).

The random thread is 800px on longest side rule, so have a browse to get a flavour of how they will look. The thing is most PC's at this stage will have at least a minimum of 1024x768 but there is an onslaught of Netbooks being unleashed and becoming very popular - these will probably have a screen resolution of 1024x600 so 600px on longest side here would be the max. Again remember headers / footers will eat up valuable pixels in the above equations.

As I say there is no easy answer to your question methinks

Cheers.

kjt

Very good advice by Cat! This may help you decide. Stats of the past 900 people on my blog:

AnCatDubh

That's excellent kjt. OP from this you can see that if you took 800px as your longest side, then it won't appear correct (read all on one screen without scrolling) on category 2 (18.4%), and 5 (9.08%) making a total of 27.48% of your visitors which would be in scroll up/down and left/right land.

On the other hand going for 600px as the longest side would include all shown in the table.

One word of caution as regards layout - if you go smaller, 600 or indeed 800 you need to be aware that those with larger resolutions will handle the image in their own way unless your blog accurately positions the 600px or 800px image in an appropriate place on the screen.

So again, my conclusion is that there may not be a perfect answer. Bummer eh.

Cheers.