What is especially annoying is that the downsampling even happens if you have downsized the picture yourself.Coelacanth wrote:There's usually an option to auto-downsize uploaded pictures to image hosting sites, because even in this day and age of modern technology, far too many people still don't know how to resize their pictures when their digital cameras take uber-hi-res images that are 3 or 4 MB each. YouTube similarly re-compresses uploaded videos. The problem is, the user has no say in how their uploads are being compressed; what compression utility is being used, what compression ratio is applied, etc.
Personally, I just use the "Save for Web"-function in Photoshop Elements for pictures I want to use on the web. Photos become high-to-maximum quality Jpegs, lineart and vector-art Gifs, none wider than 1024 pixels. I also usually check how small I can make the picture to still show what I want to show; no need for a huge picture if you want to show a close-up of one small detail. Images usually end up anywhere from 50 Kb to 300 Kb, instead of 3-4 Mb (which is why my scale modelling website which shows all 200+ models I've build until now is only around 50 Mb in size instead of 800 Mb...meaning it will take a while before I fill up the 2 Gb storage I have...).
