Post More Original Photos Faster with “Hi-Res Upload” to Trip Journals

I like to have my cake and eat it too.  The new “Hi-Res Upload” option allows me to do just that.   This is Part 2 of a three-part series.

The Hi-Res option, available to Premium trip journal subscribers along with archiving and other features, provides the same easy-to-use, drag-and-drop experience as the Express Upload. Subject to certain file size limits, I can post up to 60 photos  to my Trip Journal with a single click, all in their original resolution and quality.

The new system actually uploads 3 versions of each photo: the hi-res version, one that’s good for computer screen viewing, and a thumbnail.   The ActiveX version of this component, used by Microsoft Internet Explorer, works fastest; other browsers do the same thing, not quite as swiftly.

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New “Express Upload” Option for Trip Journal Photos

Earlier this year, I wrote about speed vs quality in uploading photos to your online Trip Journal or blog.

Recent upgrades to the MyTripJournal system allow you to upload many more photos, faster, to your online trip journal than before.  In my next few posts, I will discuss the three photo upload options and the pros and cons of each.

The “Express Upload” option can be used by all travelers.  It’s similar to components used by Facebook and MySpace (and made by the same supplier).

With the Express Upload, your photos are converted to a low-resolution JPG to display on a computer screen.  The decreased file size allows them to be uploaded very fast, but they are rarely suitable for good quality prints.  Note that, as with all photo uploads, actual elapsed time will depend on a number of other factors such as your internet connection speed, your ISP’s hardware and load on your host’s servers.

There are two versions of the photo upload component, depending on which web browser you are using.  The fastest is the ActiveX version attached to Microsoft Internet Explorer.  The Java version is compatible with most other browsers, including Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome, and also provides excellent upload speeds.

All other factors being equal, some Mac users may find the Java version to be slower than it is for Windows users.   The supplier’s technical staff explain that “performance loss on Mac is given by java script event handlers. It means that if you have a lot of java script code launched from events fired by Image Uploader, it works slower. It is limitation of Mac platform.”   We have done our best to minimize this issue for Mac users and understand that Aurigma is also working to optimize the upload process in Mac.

Next post: Hi-Res Upload option

Dan Parlow

Personal Travel Websites by RV.Net ; Online Travel Journals by MyTripJournal.com ; Explore Good Sam Club Trip Journals ; Woodalls Trip Journals ; Travel Journals by Trailer Life Directory ; Traveling USA Travel Blogs

Faster Uploads to your Trip Journal

We’ve all experienced it…a lousy internet hookup at your campsite that makes you feel like you’ve returned to the days of dial-up. When you’re on the road it is not always easy to find a fast connection, but like many of you, I am not going to let that stop me from getting my photos up on my Trip Journal for my friends and family to see. One option is to take lower-res photos (discussed in my earlier postings) … but let’s say you want to take high-res photos, and do a quick-and-dirty upload.

So now you have a bunch of photo files, all over a megabyte each and they are taking forever to upload. So you’ve been individually resaving them in a photo editing software program to make them smaller. Well there is a much easier way…through your ordinary email program! This enables many Trip Journalers to upload thousands of photos to a single journal while on the road:

Fast, Easy Photo Uploads

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Your Photos: Quality for what Purpose? The Upshot

Here’s what I woke up to today. This only happens a once or twice a year in beautiful Vancouver, BC.:

Winter’s Day

I’m excited and rush to capture it on my trusty digital camera. Now, what am I going to do with this snapshot? Hmmm, if it’s like 99% of my photos, it will never be printed. But when I’m on the road, I do intend to upload ALL my decent photos – sometimes hundreds in one go – to my current Trip Journal.

In parts 1 and 2 of this article, I discussed how, in my opinion, amateur photographers often take much higher quality photos than they’ll ever need.

So, What’s the Upshot?

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Your Photos: Quality for what Purpose? Part 2

Last week I mentioned that many amateur photographers (like myself) take higher-resolution photos than they really need. Today I will consider the quality needed for your online Trip Journal.

As explained recently by John Vermilye in this blog, computer monitors are not capable of displaying pictures with anywhere near the detail that can be seen on photo paper.

Loading times and ‘pre-optimization’

You’ve likely noticed that some photos load much faster than others on your computer screen. This can be due to a number of factors including your internet connection speed, the size of your image, and its resolution. High-res photos can take much longer to load than low-res ones, especially if your connection speed is slow.

Since you can’t see high resolution on a computer screen, there’s usually no point in sitting around and waiting for it to load. That’s why many photos are ‘pre-optimized’ for the internet when they’re received in the first place; ‘pre-optimization’ being a euphemism for stripping out much of the quality to make a fast-loading photo that will still look good on a computer screen.

If you use the MyTripJournal system, your photos will be automatically pre-optimized for the internet at the moment you load them to our servers. The file size will be reduced to somewhere in the vicinity of 50K for fast-loading purposes. Here’s a beautiful photo published in our Sept. 2006 newsletter , posted by Tom Barker in his Trip Journal ‘Our Trip to Alaska‘:

“Can You Imagine Scaling This?”

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Your Photos: Quality for what Purpose? Part 1

On Jan. 5, John Vermilye posted in this blog an excellent article on digital camera resolution. John has shared a wonderful collection of photos at http://www.lakeshoreimages.com.

By contrast, I am very much an amateur photographer, and I have worked to help thousands of others to wade their way through the sometime complicated world of recording digital images.

From my and my wife’s perspective, a very tiny percentage of photos taken on our trips has ever been printed on paper. The same goes for a lot of our friends:

Our Friends Jane and Glenn Trying to Out-Snap Each Other

So I write this article very much from the perspective of an online Trip Journaler.

Travelers on the road have sometimes competing objectives: maximize photo quality; minimize the time to send family your photos; optimize your friends’ ability to view your photos; make best use of computer storage space.

This week and next, I will consider the quality of photos needed to make for good prints AND for great online trip journals.

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