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If you have a non-commercial website hosted free on a TrainWeb server, your account was created with an inital disk quota of 10 megabytes. Additional disk space is granted as requested as long as it is for the upload of additional web pages and photos of interest to the rail community. TrainWeb Sponsors are also granted additional disk space on request with few restrictions, but the information on this page still serves as a useful guideline for Sponsor websites hosted on the TrainWeb servers. The purpose of implementing disk quotas on the TrainWeb servers is to help promote the wise use of disk space and to avoid unnecessary disk space shortages before they develope. The disk quotas are not to inhibit you from uploading information and photographs of interest to the rail community. Within reason, each of your requests for additional disk space will be granted, but please give us 2 business days to implement your requests. Usually, we will increase your disk quota by 10 megabytes each time you request additional disk space. If we see that it is likely that you will use the additional 10 megabytes in a short time frame and we see that you are making wise use of the disk space granted, then we may boost your disk quota by more than an additional 10 megabytes on each request. There are some "red flags" that indicate to us that unnecessary and wasteful disk space is being requested: Visitors to your website should be able to view all files that have been uploaded to your web account. Thus, you should not be using your web account as free disk storage space. ".zip", ".doc" and any other type of file that cannot be viewed using a web browser should not be stored in your web account. If there is no link to the file from any of your web pages, then the file should not be stored in your web account. We have found that some of the websites hosted on the TrainWeb servers with excessive disk usage have uploaded large ".zip" files! The file size of most photographs should be less than 100K bytes. If your photographs are between 100K and 150K, they are within reason, but could probably be compressed without losing any significant quality or resolution. ".jpg" photograph files should mostly be in the range between 30K and 80K bytes. Most digital cameras will create reasonable size images when using almost any setting except a "megapixel" setting if your camera has one. Digital cameras often have resolution settings of standard, fine, and extra fine. These settings will usually create reasonable size ".jpg" files. If you send your film off to a processing service and they send you a diskette back with ".jpg" images of your photographs, those also will usually be a reasonable size. If, however, you have prints made of your photographs and then scan them in yourself, this is very likely to create huge uncompressed ".jpg" image files! These files will often range in size from 200K to 500K bytes for each photograph! This is much much too large for each photograph! We will not honor requests for additional disk space from people that are uploading photographs of this size. These huge ".jpg" files need to be compressed before being uploaded. Not only do these files rapidly chew up disk space, but the download time of these photographs frustrates visitors to your website, especially visitors using 56K dial-up lines. Usually the program that you use to scan your photographs will have an option to compress the ".jpg" file being created. Most of these programs also have an option to compress a file that you have already scanned, which will save you the time of scanning the photograph again. You may have to play with the ".jpg" compression settings until you get a result in the 30K to 70K byte filesize that retains the quality and resolution that you wish. At TrainWeb, we use various models of the Sony Mavica cameras. Until the year 2000, almost all of our photographs were taken in "Standard Resolution Mode". These photographs are 640x480 pixels and tend to range in size from 20K to 40K. As of the year 2000, we have started to use "Fine Resolution Mode". That mode still produces 640x480 pixel photographs, but the resolution is a bit higher and the size of the files range from 40K to 70K. We have seen other people use the "Extra Fine Resolution Mode". That produces 1029x768 pixel images that range in size from 180K to 220K. I'd suggest avoiding that resolution setting unless you think the extra disk space and download time is really worth it. There are utilities that you can use to reduce the size of your existing ".jpg" image files. One that we like and use quite often to reduce the size of both ".jpg" and ".gif" images throughout TrainWeb is "GIFwizard". Click here to visit the GIFwizard website now. Another program that we use frequently to compress ".jpg" files is "PhotoWorks" which can be downloaded free from their website. Click here to register by providing your name and e-mail address. After registering, you will be able to download the free software. Below you can see some examples of a photo at various levels of ".jpg" compression, resolutions, and file sizes. Take a look at each one. Especially make note of how long each takes to download. Decide on your own trade-off between quality, disk space and download time. Then, compress your large size photo files to a quality and size with which you are comfortable.
There are two additional software packages that we use frequently at TrainWeb that you may wish to consider to purchase. One is the "PhotoWorks Desktop", the upgraded verson of the free photo processing software from PhotoWorks.com. I think the cost is under $30. Click here to register at the PhotoWorks.com website and then select "PhotoWorks Desktop". Another useful photo processing package is "Graphics Workshop" from "Alchemy Mindworks, Inc.". This is a very powerful graphics package with the ability to compress an entire folder full of photo files in a single batch procedure. Click here to visit the website of "Alchemy Mindworks, Inc." for more information about "Graphics Workshop". Both "PhotoWorks Desktop" and "Graphics Workshop" give you a lot of power to improve and enhance your photographs in addition to the abililty to compress the image size. If you need to increase your disk space at this time, click here. Be sure to mention the URL of your website, your name and your e-mail address. |
