Bitcoin Forum

Hello guys!
As I see, sometimes people post images in threads and sometimes they open threads with a lot of images. As you know, it makes load time a little bit slow because images are high in size. To reduce the load time and make things more comfortable for everyone, I think it will be better if all of us compress images, this will save space and time and isn't hard.

1. For example, let's see the size of this Image 1 (https://i.imgur.com/HNJ23gP.png) - Seems to be 171.8 KB. Normal but how far can we compress it?

2. First of all, compress JPG/PNG images without losing quality by using TinyJPG (https://tinyjpg.com/)
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/10/15/RJFiG.png

As we see, we have 74% reduction in image size without losing quality and got 44.5 KB in size.

3. Can we compress it even further? Yes but for this we need to convert image into webp and compress in this format. You can't upload webp images on imgur, so have to use another image upload website.
For highest compress, we can use compress-or-die (https://compress-or-die.com/webp).

So, go here, click on select a file, then choose your image and upload. Then, you'll get window with settings for your image where you can change compression percentage and so on, but it automatically sets quality on 75%, so let's see the result (btw I resized the image):
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/10/15/RJEuD.png

I guess there shouldn't be any noticable difference on 85% compression, btw you can try it to see results yourself and do the same in future on this forum to help those who use mobile data to save network :D

Useful links together:
1. JPG/PNG only compression: https://tinyjpg.com/
2. Convert JPG/PNG and compresses into webp: https://compress-or-die.com/webp
3. GIF compression: https://compress-or-die.com/webp
4. Image resize: https://resizeimage.net/
Btw, good luck guys!

Will update the list in near future.

Better still - don't post images unless they are essential. Consider posting a thumbnail with a link to a larger image. This doesn't apply to social interaction threads of course.

Even more important - please don't quote an image - we've seen it once, and that should be enough.

Yes I would find it also good if images are processed in the size. So file size and also dimensions.
I find the point raised by Jet Cash even more important. No images may be retained in quotes :-X
Personally, I find this much worse and more tedious when reading through a thread.

To be honest, kbs of data is not a big loss even for mobile users. If the data consumption while using your favorite social media sites doesn't bother you then what more for a single image here ;D. You can't feel it actually. However, there's one thing which made me convinced on using image compression — the faster data transfer. My device is low tech and sometimes it's having a hard time to load the webpage especially when there are so many images on the thread I visit. That's why I think it would be advantageous for me.

Count me in dude! I'll try to compress images from now on though it takes more time on the process of uploading hehehe. 

Nice but i think this code works fine.

From what I know this only shows the image smaller, it doesn't make people download less data.

And I agree with OP. In some cases there are too many too big images, even for a computer. Just this don't happen too often, especially in the areas I use to read/post.

Yep, it didn't compress the size but the appearance size only.

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This topic is applicable only to thread starters that used lots of big image in there post, But definitely not on a simple picture reply in the thread. First of all, we should determine what is the ideal size of image so that it will load smoothly on mobile. By that being said, We can assess now how far we can compress the image size considering that the resolution of the picture will not gonna be severely affected.

I like the idea of OP considering that I'm a fellow mobile user most of my time here.

I see this often and have never reported such posts, but I wonder if it would be desirable and what is the moderator’s position on the issue? Unnecessary use of quote is very widespread on the forum, and some members do not respond to warnings at all - although these are mostly the same ones who do not read the answers to their posts (shitposters&signature spammers).

Take this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5265198.0) for example, we have Hero member who has not yet learned how to reduce the image to some appropriate size, and after that we have this :

Senior Member Reatim (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5265198.msg54891733#msg54891733)
Senior Member fiulpro (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5265198.msg54892316#msg54892316)
Full Member rodskee (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5265198.msg54901379#msg54901379)
Senior Member Gotumoot (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5265198.msg54934050#msg54934050)

I believe that after another 5 pages there will be more who will want to embellish their posts with an abuse of quote option.

Edit : Post from links are deleted by moderator after I report them.

It is incomplete solultion to display big images but size of images are not changed to smaller.

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If people have software or tool to do image resize on their computer, do this instead of using online resize image websites. Those sites can store your data, and sell them or future data breach. It is risky for your privacy and sometime for your security if you use those sites for your personal images.

Use them with Tor whenever you can.

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I agree with JetCash that don't abuse images on the forum. It was discussed years ago and from my memory it was raised by JetCash or JetCash was the one strongly supported the style "Don't abuse with images".

It is emphasized in Bitcointalk posting etiquette (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5184741.0)

Yep, quoting posts with images is annoying AF, it should be a part of basic forum bon ton to remove those. Just went through recent post history of those two users and they constantly do that, that example you shared was not a coincidence, rather a rule for them. Zero fucks given. It would be good to hear mods stance on that, as some people won;t learn the lesson until their posts start  getting deleted.

Could that be somehow sorted automatically by forum, to at least hide images in quotes, if not completely remove it? Would that be complicated to implement?

Many years ago, I disabled the display of videos and images in the browser because the traffic was paid. The main dump of images is in the bounty and ICO themes.
Internet traffic is now free or very cheap, so you don't need to create new restrictions for most users.
If you think that the user is abusing the insertion of images, click the "Report to moderator" button.
The forum should allow people to express their thoughts in any way and not limit them.

Of course, some things become a habit over time if no one reports them, and we start taking them for granted. This is why some members ignore entire boards and literally admit defeat in front of users who unfortunately haven’t even learned the basics on the forum over the years. I will try to report some of such posts to see if there will be any reactions, but we should always keep in mind that not all mods have the same criteria when it comes to moderating posts that literally do not violate forum rules.

There are not many images being posted in the forum but there are few section where we see a lot of images being posted. One of those section is WO thread. Although many images posted there are relevant and interesting but its annoying when anyone quote post with the images and we have un-necessary duplicate images.

This is still a bit hard than quoting a part of a post rather than quotinh a whole post to respond a part of a post and if you spend a little time, I'm sure you will find a lot of high profile who do that most often.
While it's possible to create a post more eye catching or attractive, no one gives a fuck other than fulfilling the posting requirements.

That's just because the image uses PNG instead of JPEG format.
https://www.labnol.org/images/2008/jpg_vs_png.png
In this case, however, JPEG is better.

On mobile data I have much more problems with embedded commercial videos than images, but Bitcointalk doesn't have that problem.
On desktop, in less than 6 days I've downloaded 115 GB. I don't think images are going to matter. With increasing bandwidth, this problem solves itself over the years.

JPG already is a compression which deletes parts of the image (irreversible).
With the JPG compression, you are keeping all the information regarding the brightness of the pixel and shrink the color channels.
Afterwards a discrete cosinus transformation (DCT) is applied. Depending on the quality level (80-90 is usually chosen) you then further compress the tables containing the coefficients.

Long story short, you can not compress a JPG image without losing information -> without reducing the quality.

It is very irritating indeed but sometimes that can be the entirety of someone's post. It would be better if a quoted image were minimised but I've zero idea whether a forum can automate that.

Yes. I mean it's doable, not that anyone will bother doing it on SMF, let alone EpochTalk.


Edit: before anyone yells at me that this uses bandwidth for the full size image - not necessarily, it's likely cached at that point. Perhaps some cache setting tweaks on the server side would be needed, I can't be bothered to check.

Depending on what kind of image it is, I think most people wouldn't mind and wouldn't notice any significant differences.
I just did a test and found a random Bitcoin chart in jpg format. I converted it to webp.

Orignal JPG picture (https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/12/zX6d3.jpeg) was 74 KB.
The webp converted image (https://ibb.co/CsHBXSr) is 36 KB.

The converted image is over 50% smaller. The difference in quality is insignificant.

The difference actually is huge.

jpg:

webp:


You scaled the image down.
You could also scale it down while keeping it JPG.
And if you want to have a worse quality to save space, one could use the jpg compression again with a quality factor of 70-80ish.

But scaling it down does not real count as compression. This can always be done and is independent from the file format.

Good suggestions, all of them.  There were a few members who were making it a habit to post extremely large, unnecessary images when they created threads, much like mainstream media sites do--images that add nothing to the post and contain nothing useful.  I was so annoyed by this that I created a thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5202806) about it late last year.  Some of the members stopped posting those images as far as I know, for which I'm grateful.

And yeah, when someone replies to a post and quotes an enormous image, it drives me nuts--or even when they quote huge blocks of text just to make a short post.

I recently started a thread about my experience with using a bitcoin ATM and included images.  Initially they were huge, but I got advice from o_e_l_e_o about resizing them:

Not being very proficient in coding, I wouldn't have figured out how to do that without a little help and some constructive criticism from a helpful member.

Correct me if wrong but doesn't specifying less width and height does the same thing? Ie. Use less data?

You're wrong. Dimensions are processed by your browser, after downloading.
Example:
https://loyce.club/other/5yearfulldata.gif
Now click "View Image" (right mouse button, depending on your browser), and you'll get the real size.

Imagine you are reading a very nice thread and suddenly there are guys quoted the same OP post with huge images consecutively, thats not just annoying but it will hurt your eyes with those gigantic images especially if you are using a desktop/laptop.

Im also thinking if reporting that to moderators could be considered as good report like noting a " huge size of images, bad representation".

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^{Before I really dont know how to make the image adjuat but later on I found out. But thanks OP for adding another option to every users to do that.}

I reported one post from user who is quote whole OP with big image to see what the result will be, and today I see that the report was marked as good and the post was deleted. Although the outcome of each report will depend on the moderator who comes to it first, it seems that some members will learn to use the forum functions correctly only when their posts are deleted.

I used https://ezgif.com/jpg-to-webp to convert the image from JPG to webp. I guess they scaled it down.

Don't look at the numbers/stats. The reduced quality isn't that important when showing a chart like in my example. Both pictures would be usable.

But all of this wouldn't be necessary if one of 3 things were to happen:

1. Users stop posting huge images.
2. Users stop quoting posts with huge images.
3. *The forum made it impossible for a quoted image to appear in a new post.

*This would be somewhat controversial though. Very often higher ranked members quote newbie accounts for legitimate reasons to make their images visible in a thread. This could prevent that.   

In your example, yes they would.

But there is not a single reason to convert the image to webp.
If you have a PNG or JPG image, just run the JPG compression (again) with a lower quality factor, and your image gets smaller in size

I don't see any reason for using any other format than PNG for uncompressed and JPG for compressed images.

My experience with all the suggestions I made until now is that only handful of people will actually care about the forum , the rest are here just for the bounties and rewards and they don't really care what they do, spamming and shitting all over the place. Good suggestion, i hope more people will start caring.

What you are talking is the resolution of the image, the thing with adjusting the width and height has to do with the quality of the image and the file size, as you adjust it below the normal size you are sacrificing the quality of it to reduce the size load. So I guess what you have said is incorrect, smaller images comes with lesser data than bigger ones.

I think this is why some users prefer to just drop the image link so it will not be bothering as it look when posted in the forum, but also some users are complaining whether they could have just directly posted it.

My answer for this is, don't post an image if it is not necessary.  ;)

Yeah it is bothering seeing a user to quote the whole post especially when there's a picture in it, huge picture, when they could have just reply if it is still on the first page of the thread OR they quote it with the picture deleted OR they could just paste the entire line that they want to quote with bold or italic text for crediting. It is good actually coz they are receiving a message that they the post of them is deleted, so they will not do it next time. But I guess the mods should put the very reason why the post is deleted. " Bad presentation " will do.

Jet Cash
Usually thread authors (OPs) post images for introduction in ANN threads but of course there are other cases too (for example, promotions, statistics, etc).

When someone quotes the same image, it doesn't increase load time / data usage but seems to be really boring.

NavI_027
Idea behind this procedures is to resize image in order to get smaller image that as a result is smaller in size (MBs/KBs). And then compress after that to get even smaller in size.

LoyceV
Your picture described everything perfectly:
PNG - Portable Network Graphics
JPG  / JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group

So, long story short, PNG = higher quality images than JPG but is higher in size too because of this reason.
Advantege of PNG over JPG is that sometimes we need images with transparent background (for example, logos).

Also, I want to mention WEBP since I included it in topic. This new image format was created especially for web. WEBP offers lossless compression of images and higher quality at the same time. Idea behind WEBP was to make load of images faster and efficient.

bob123
Nothing can be compressed without losing quality but this compression allows you to reduce size while making it almost impossible for eye to detect the difference between two.


P.S. There are two benefits of this compression. Less data when using mobile network and less load time of images, as a result faster and better performance on every device. Personally, I prefer to see thread loaded in 3 seconds rather than in 7 seconds.

I post pictures sometimes and I'm guilty of this as I don't post a thumbnail but the entire picture though I adjust it to a lower size, I'll follow this advise of yours. Thanks Jet Cash, less complicated.  :D


~snip~ could be useful here.

Anyway, thank you OP, effort is appreciated, that would certainly help to make this forum a better place.

Well, people have the habit of quoting the posts and then replying them. They do not care if the posts contain the image of not and therefore once a post containing an image is quoted again n again, we have to see the same image in same size again n again. I am sure no one does this intentionally, it is just people do not know how to remove the image from the quoted post or how to shorten the image size or maybe they just don't care.

So I'll test the water if ever I encountered some of those users quoting the whole OP and see if I will got same result.

Ive see so it will depend on different moderators perspective of either it could be deleted or not. But there should be a constant decision to this to avoid bias right? Or still depend on users case who did the quoting and the degree it affects the post. Maybe adding it in the forum rule could be good(?) not sure. I am glad to hear any opinion from moderator about this.

I never thought that the such posts can be deleted on reporting. I see people quoting the whole ANN thread which contain both the images and lot of text, which is just useless. Same thing is done sometimes on the signature campaign main post being quoted in full which contain everything including the signatures BBcodes  :(
From today onwards, i will also report such posts.

I edited my previous post with links to posts that are unnecessarily quoted whole OP with big image, and I can confirm that all 4 posts have been deleted + one extra in the same thread. In my report I ask mod to edit post or delete, but since the posts have been deleted, it is obvious that some moderators do not approve of such behavior.

I think the forum can be an even better place than it is now, but that means we need to use the "report to moderator" button more, and even if it sometimes means that the report may be marked as "bad".

Modern forum software now auto fetches the last quote, but it's hard to blame the newbies if they are unaware of this.

Compression without losing quality is possible.
There are two types of compression: lossless and lossy compression.

The lossless compression is quite limited and lossy compression can still be done without humans noticing any significant difference (i.e. because the human eye is more sensitive to brightness than to colors -> reduction of color data easily possible).




And this is perfectly possible with JPG. You just need to compress it further (i.e. by setting the quality factor lower).

Besides playing with picture size and dimensions, I would suggest to all bounty hunters delete their posts with reports at least once a year or after campaign distributes rewards. Who needs old reports anyway? Better clean all that bytes of informational garbage.
Anyway if you still need your super necessary intellectual property you can still find it on https://loyce.club/

I seriously doubt that will happen or that they care in the first place. I have always made a distinction between link spamming social media bounty hunters and other hunters who actually provide a service. The other group consists of graphic designers, translators, content creators, bug reporters, and whatever else is available. The first group of Facebook/Twitter spammers will surely not do that. Every seconds spent on deleting old links is a second they could have posted new links on the forum.

A rule stating that quoting an OP is not allowed would be great. Making it impossible to quote pictures in OPs would be even better.

Actually just minimizing the images to a thumbnail would do the job. But then, we have to wait for Epochy's release just like Half-Life 3.

I am bumping this thread to ask mods/staff about some of my reports which stay unhandled for last 10+ days, and they concern reports about abusive quoting of OP with big images. In my first series of such reports all such post are deleted in less than 24 hours, now obviously no one wants to solve them.

What I'm wondering is if it makes more sense at all to report such posts which do not violate any forum rules, but are really very inappropriate and unnecessary - and for those who have limited internet traffic or slow internet it only makes difficult to use the forum.