Consensus on image size for web display
RenderPretender
Posts: 1,041
in The Commons
Hello -
Is there a consensus here on the optimal image size, in pixels, for web display? I normally render at a max width or height of 1500 pixels to maximize quality in spite of hardware limitations, and then scale down to about 1100. But is there a consensus? I constantly see artists rendering at ridiculously large sizes that are unviewable on the web when maximized.
Thank you.
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As far as I'm aware, there's no consensus. Much of it depends on just how the image is to be displayed on the web page. That said, for web I generally render at/around 4k resolution (3840 x 2160), making it easier to do whatever postwork I might need to. Then I reduce it to 50% (1080p, 1920 x 1080) and save for web use. I think most people these days have at least a 1080p monitor. A thumbnail and any decent lightbox should take of ensuring the image isn't too big for the user's screen. Hope that helps.
Consensus? Many would suggest rendering larger than required.
This gives you the opportunity to do postwork (as already said), before downsizing; it also allows for the image to be cropped to best achieve the desired result.
Thanks for the feedback, all. As for rendering larger than needed, I'm rendering at a largest dimension of 1500 because I've read here that the area of the render size is related to number of iterations, and I'm trying to achieve optimal quality with limited hardware.
One thing to note is that because of downsampling, when rendering at a larger size, fewer iterations are required. Because information is lost when you shrink an image, much of the noise iray generates is also lost, and the image looks clearer and sharper. It's the same principle behind taking photographs at higher megapixel sizes- at full size, the images are grainy, but when shrunk down you lose much of that and are left with a higher quality image. I render at a higher resolution because it means I can render to fewer iterations, do my postwork, and watch the graininess disappear when the image is resized for sharing. Don't just take my word for it.
What's the context? Are you taking about for a website? For promo images? For displaying personal artwork?
Well, one metric that you might want to take a look at is this one. Screen resolution stats,
http://gs.statcounter.com/screen-resolution-stats
The big takeaway here is that while 1920x1080 is catching up, 1366x768 is still ahead as far as usage on the WWW, and 360x640 (smartphone) is by far on top.
As to the other comments, yeah I render at 3840x2160 as well whenever possible, then cut the render sizes down to 1920x1080, as others have suggested on this thread.
So I think your question should be, who is your target audience? 1920x1080 is usually reduced in size when viewing on a smaller laptop screen, but of course going the other way, i.e. blowing up 720p to 1080p, well that can introduce some noise and blurriness. I decided that 1080p was the way to go in my case, but 720p is also pretty popular.
One thing to consider is the size of the 'viewing window' on the page you are planning on showing off your art. As an example, here on the Daz forum, I like to keep my widths at 800 pixels or less, because it seems to squeeze the width otherwise in the forum view.
I actually tried this and was concerned about the fewer iterations, but the completed image, after postwork and resizing, looked quite fine. The biggest issue now will be for me to decide whether to, for consistency, resize by percentage or pixels.
This would be just for displaying peronal work, such as galleries.
I like usual 16:9 aspect ratio.
18:9 is becoming more and more important, but we're not still there today. 4:3 is widely used too.
As for the height, I wouldn't use anything that is less than 1080. Nowadays I use 1440p, but I'd like to switch to 2160p.
That oversampling suggestion is very valid, but I'm not doing that because my post-editing workflow is still pretty long, and I gladly avoid that one more step. With Ghost Lights and with the new Intel Denoiser I don't have noise problems anymore!
I was experimenting with ghost lights, but while occasionally helpful, they tended to just add up to another veriable that I had to control, resulting in inconsistent lighting across image series. Now I'm experimenting with Dreamlight's Wow Lights that seem to have potential.
What's the denoiser? Is it something like GIMP that can be downloaded and applied in postwork?
Take a look at this thread for denoising with external software optimised for rendered images :
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/316206/denoise-renders-and-save-a-lot-of-time-nvidia-not-reqd
I was experimenting with ghost lights, but while occasionally helpful, they tended to just add up to another veriable that I had to control, resulting in inconsistent lighting across image series. Now I'm experimenting with Dreamlight's Wow Lights that seem to have potential.
What's the denoiser? Is it something like GIMP that can be downloaded and applied in postwork?
I looked at that thread, but it seems like a lot of fiddling. I'm looking for a clean stand-alone solution with no scripting. Topaz Labs make a denoiser and noise reducer ($50 and $30, respectively), but I'm not sure I understand the difference between the two, functionally. The trial version of the former seems to work beautifully.
There is a link to a free DragNDrop app, just drop the renders on it and it will denoise them automatically. DS 4.11 also comes with NVidia denoising.
Thanks, I'll try to find it. I also need to see if I'm running 4.11 atm... I updated recently, but I'll have to look.
Just to complicate matters, remember that high pixel density displays (e.g. what Apple calls 'Retina') are becoming more widespread, with pixel ratios of 2:1 or even 3:1. What this means is that if your intended image will be displayed at, say, 960x720, you'll want to have a 1920x1440 image on hand to serve up to visitors using those displays. You'll also need to use the 'srcset' and 'sizes' attributes to the 'img' tag in your HTML to offer the browser a choice of different sizes.
It's painful for all kinds of reasons -- the need to prepare a higher-resolution image, and the performance/bandwidth hit that comes from serving these gigantic images. On the other hand, a high-resolution image on a high-density display looks pretty damn gorgeous.
At present all my landscape images are saved at 1920x1080 at zero DPI as I don't use them for printing. Most browsers will load them to fit the screen first and then clicking on them will show them full size unless the viewers screen is greater than 1920x1080 and then they will see the full image when loaded as it will fit on their screen. DPI means nothing for screen viewing as you will only see the number of pixels that make up the image on any screen that it is viewed on. I use Irfanview to set the DPI to zero but Photo Shop wont let you do that so I set it to 1 DPI when using it.
Although for scanning it applies to any image.
https://www.scantips.com/no72dpi.html
Does anyone have a link to the current DragnDrop denoiser? I tried to install the one I found on this forum, but it seems to be expired.
I tend to upload to dA for display, and their platform sizes the initial image automatically. I use various aspects in my renders for compositional reasons, so for the full-sized image, I was thinking of using 1200 to 1500 pixels for the largest dimension. I'm limited on hardware, so my renders my not be sufficient to justify absurdly high-res/large presentations. Trying to strike a happy medium here.
Whatever looks good right now will look like a postage stamp in a few years. When I first made my webcomic most monitors were 800x500. I made my webcomic 500 pixels wide and it dominated the screen back then. Now adays its impossible to read without hitting CTRL+ a couple of times.
You probably found the link to the first test version. This one here will not expire:
https://taosoft.dk/software/freeware/dnden/updates/DnD_for_nVidia_%26_Intel_Denoisers_1.000a_NET4.zip
It will go on the net when you start it, it's just checking for updates, nothing dangerous.
Or ask retro game enthusiasts with their 240p CRT monitors make a photo :)
Seriously, i hate all that "high resolution race" which makes all that stuff that you keep for years (photos, renders, drawings, etc.) "obsolete"
Sorry to say, but the denoised renders from that program give me a rather blurred impression, nothing I couldn't accomplish in Photoshop, and I'm bad with photoshop. It's not bad when you want a somewhat stylized end result, but when you want extreme detail, higher convergence and elaborate touch-up are the only real options.