12 ms·

1MB per photo is massive. Its easy to compress photos down to 100KB or less.

NavinF 4y ago
Wat. 1MB per photo is tiny when the photo is the content. You need ~100KB for a high quality 512x512 WebP. AVIF will be slightly better but still doesn’t have universal support. We’ve had 4K (8MP) screens for a decade now and normal DSLRs shoot 25MP so you can zoom in.
- worldofmatthew 4y ago
  Bandwidth is extremely carbon intensive. Someone viewing a couple of few 25MP images online could use 20g to 100g of CO2 (depending on compression).
  - ChrisRR 4y ago
    And how much carbon would they use having those photos printed out and mailed to them to look at? Given that they could be streaming 1080p video instead, I think viewing a few photos is a relatively harmless hobby
    - worldofmatthew 4y ago
      Physical item that can be looked out for 20 to 50 years vs a digital image. Not the same thing.
  - ttoinou 4y ago
    Source ?
    - worldofmatthew 4y ago
      https://www.emergeinteractive.com/insights/detail/does-irresponsible-web-development-contribute-to-global-warming/ https://www.emergeinteractive.com/insights/detail/does-irres... In the US as of 2020, it was 3KG CO2 per GB Data.
      - cosarara 4y ago
        I don't agree with the reasoning presented. It takes the estimate for the amount of energy that it takes to run the internet infrastructure and clients (141GW * 8765h in a year = 1235865 GWh), divides it by the amount of data transferred yearly (241 billion GB) and gets to 5.12kWh/GB. You might argue that if people download more data, more equipment needs to run to enable it, but really all this energy consumption is happening regardless of my PC being idle or saturating its fiber pipes with torrents. If your website weights 14kb, all this same equipment needs to be on for my PC to load it.
        worldofmatthew 4y ago
        The website usage on the client side is more to do with resource usage. Unnecessary usage of Javascript is often what makes websites laggy. You computer will normally down-clock (you can turn this off in the bios) when under lighter loads.The difference between a JS-free webpage and a bloated web page that uses multiple JavaScript with extra Javascript for ads and tracking could be around 10W/H to 40W/H on Desktops.
        cosarara 4y ago
        I agree with this. I was disagreeing with the statement > Bandwidth is extremely carbon intensive. and the reasoning that supports that statement.
        worldofmatthew 4y ago
        If people used less bandwidth, less new equipment would be bought to serve the increasing demand. Less bandwidth = Less carbon.
        cosarara 4y ago
        Maybe, or maybe the new equipment is much more efficient than the one it's replacing. It sounds true, but you can't really tell if it is or not, and really my annoyance is in saying it costs any estimated amount of energy, or carbon, to transfer 1GB of data. It does not, the transfer itself is basically cost-less. What costs money is running the infrastructure that makes it possible, and that's much harder to measure.
  - bmacho 4y ago
    And who pays for that?
  - lozenge 4y ago
    We create 40kg of CO2 a day each through our diet, transport, consumption and other energy use. The idea we need to target our energy burden on Internet routers is absurd.
    - worldofmatthew 4y ago
      14 tons per year is pretty high. Most calculators estimate my usage at 6 tons per year.
      - lozenge 4y ago
        The US average is 15 metric tons and that's production-based, ie counting exports and not counting imports. If you count imports and stop counting exports it would be higher. Now the US does rank highly in this measure but that's also where the 'typical' HN reader is. The typical reader is also well off which can make a huge difference(flights etc).
    - docmars 4y ago
      I lament the day this becomes policy to regulate average internet usage due to a few religious fanatics who fail to understand that higher levels of CO2 enrich the Earth, and that science has been sabotaged to suit political ambitions fueled by fear porn.
  - tracker1 4y ago
    The bandwidth used for single images is dwarfed... massively by streaming video content... I don't think it's a use case that is worthy of excessive time/effort to optimize for size because of bandwidth cost/effects. edit: I'm not saying don't do it if you can get away with a smaller image dimension, or do basic optimizations... but if your concern is the environmental impact from a simgle high-resolution image from a photography site, you're putting the emphasis in the wrong place.
habibur 4y ago
Wondering how. The banner image won't be displayed by Facebook or Twitter unless it's 1200x650 in size.
- worldofmatthew 4y ago
  I done photos larger than that at closer to 50KB with AVIF. 100KB with JPEG should be doable.
- tomschwiha 4y ago
  Webp could be worth trying. Stripping metadata also. If staying with jpg - Jpgoptim could help.
bigiain 4y ago
If it’s an illustrative photo for an article, sure. If it’s a gallery photo for a site promoting a photographers skill or library, nah…
- kjkjadksj 4y ago
  Its best to have a compressed low res thumbnail that you can click to open the full resolution file in another tab imo
  - innocenat 4y ago
    That 1MB is the full resolution image you open in another tab.
    - xigoi 4y ago
      In that case, it shouldn't be counted into the webpage weight.
bscphil 4y ago
This is simply false, even if you mean using AVIF. Here's a test case, using a moderate sized (3000x2000) image. Nothing ridiculously huge or anything, and it's not an especially complex image. I'm linking the best I can do for both JPEG (at 200 KB) and AVIF (at 100 KB). If you can create a passable versions of these images at 100 KB with either codec (or WEBP for that matter), please do show us how. Original image: https://0x0.st/o9x5.png https://0x0.st/o9x5.png JPEG (200 KB): https://0x0.st/o93i.jpg https://0x0.st/o93i.jpg AVIF (100 KB): https://0x0.st/o9xC.avif https://0x0.st/o9xC.avif Maybe JPEG XL will get us closer, but not all the way there, that's for sure: https://0x0.st/o9xd.jxl https://0x0.st/o9xd.jxl - JPEG XL is intended for high quality images, so it is not optimized for this kind of extremely low bitrate (~0.1 bpp) usage.
- worldofmatthew 4y ago
  I normally deal with 720P images for internet distribution. For 3000x2000 that would be around 230KB to 250KB.
  - bscphil 4y ago
    You replied to a thread about a photography website. I don't think 720p images are the norm for that use case. In any event, I don't think the AVIF result at 250 KB is acceptable for photography either: https://0x0.st/o93a.avif https://0x0.st/o93a.avif - There's a ton of smearing and blurring that's very obvious when you're viewing the image at full size.
  - IMTDb 4y ago
    3000x2000 basically means "fullscreen on a retina display @ full resolution". You can only reasonably show one picture like that at a time. So it's completely OK to have the currently displayed picture at that resolution/size. But all photo should be loaded at a much lower size, initially, and only downloaded at full size the the user puts them in full screen.
    - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
      I know lazy loading is in vogue, but as a user it only ever seems to create problems for me. I’d much rather the website download all the images ahead of time on page load, so I don’t have to wait for full quality versions each time I full screen a different image.

Wat. 1MB per photo is tiny when the photo is the content. You need ~100KB for a high quality 512x512 WebP. AVIF will be slightly better but still doesn’t have universal support. We’ve had 4K (8MP) screens for a decade now and normal DSLRs shoot 25MP so you can zoom in.

worldofmatthew 4y ago
Bandwidth is extremely carbon intensive. Someone viewing a couple of few 25MP images online could use 20g to 100g of CO2 (depending on compression).
- ChrisRR 4y ago
  And how much carbon would they use having those photos printed out and mailed to them to look at? Given that they could be streaming 1080p video instead, I think viewing a few photos is a relatively harmless hobby
  - worldofmatthew 4y ago
    Physical item that can be looked out for 20 to 50 years vs a digital image. Not the same thing.
- ttoinou 4y ago
  Source ?
  - worldofmatthew 4y ago
    https://www.emergeinteractive.com/insights/detail/does-irresponsible-web-development-contribute-to-global-warming/ https://www.emergeinteractive.com/insights/detail/does-irres... In the US as of 2020, it was 3KG CO2 per GB Data.
    - cosarara 4y ago
      I don't agree with the reasoning presented. It takes the estimate for the amount of energy that it takes to run the internet infrastructure and clients (141GW * 8765h in a year = 1235865 GWh), divides it by the amount of data transferred yearly (241 billion GB) and gets to 5.12kWh/GB. You might argue that if people download more data, more equipment needs to run to enable it, but really all this energy consumption is happening regardless of my PC being idle or saturating its fiber pipes with torrents. If your website weights 14kb, all this same equipment needs to be on for my PC to load it.
      - worldofmatthew 4y ago
        The website usage on the client side is more to do with resource usage. Unnecessary usage of Javascript is often what makes websites laggy. You computer will normally down-clock (you can turn this off in the bios) when under lighter loads.The difference between a JS-free webpage and a bloated web page that uses multiple JavaScript with extra Javascript for ads and tracking could be around 10W/H to 40W/H on Desktops.
        cosarara 4y ago
        I agree with this. I was disagreeing with the statement > Bandwidth is extremely carbon intensive. and the reasoning that supports that statement.
        worldofmatthew 4y ago
        If people used less bandwidth, less new equipment would be bought to serve the increasing demand. Less bandwidth = Less carbon.
        cosarara 4y ago
        Maybe, or maybe the new equipment is much more efficient than the one it's replacing. It sounds true, but you can't really tell if it is or not, and really my annoyance is in saying it costs any estimated amount of energy, or carbon, to transfer 1GB of data. It does not, the transfer itself is basically cost-less. What costs money is running the infrastructure that makes it possible, and that's much harder to measure.
- bmacho 4y ago
  And who pays for that?
- lozenge 4y ago
  We create 40kg of CO2 a day each through our diet, transport, consumption and other energy use. The idea we need to target our energy burden on Internet routers is absurd.
  - worldofmatthew 4y ago
    14 tons per year is pretty high. Most calculators estimate my usage at 6 tons per year.
    - lozenge 4y ago
      The US average is 15 metric tons and that's production-based, ie counting exports and not counting imports. If you count imports and stop counting exports it would be higher. Now the US does rank highly in this measure but that's also where the 'typical' HN reader is. The typical reader is also well off which can make a huge difference(flights etc).
  - docmars 4y ago
    I lament the day this becomes policy to regulate average internet usage due to a few religious fanatics who fail to understand that higher levels of CO2 enrich the Earth, and that science has been sabotaged to suit political ambitions fueled by fear porn.
- tracker1 4y ago
  The bandwidth used for single images is dwarfed... massively by streaming video content... I don't think it's a use case that is worthy of excessive time/effort to optimize for size because of bandwidth cost/effects. edit: I'm not saying don't do it if you can get away with a smaller image dimension, or do basic optimizations... but if your concern is the environmental impact from a simgle high-resolution image from a photography site, you're putting the emphasis in the wrong place.

habibur 4y ago

Wondering how. The banner image won't be displayed by Facebook or Twitter unless it's 1200x650 in size.

worldofmatthew 4y ago
I done photos larger than that at closer to 50KB with AVIF. 100KB with JPEG should be doable.
tomschwiha 4y ago
Webp could be worth trying. Stripping metadata also. If staying with jpg - Jpgoptim could help.

bigiain 4y ago

If it’s an illustrative photo for an article, sure. If it’s a gallery photo for a site promoting a photographers skill or library, nah…

kjkjadksj 4y ago
Its best to have a compressed low res thumbnail that you can click to open the full resolution file in another tab imo
- innocenat 4y ago
  That 1MB is the full resolution image you open in another tab.
  - xigoi 4y ago
    In that case, it shouldn't be counted into the webpage weight.

bscphil 4y ago

This is simply false, even if you mean using AVIF. Here's a test case, using a moderate sized (3000x2000) image. Nothing ridiculously huge or anything, and it's not an especially complex image. I'm linking the best I can do for both JPEG (at 200 KB) and AVIF (at 100 KB). If you can create a passable versions of these images at 100 KB with either codec (or WEBP for that matter), please do show us how. Original image: https://0x0.st/o9x5.png https://0x0.st/o9x5.png JPEG (200 KB): https://0x0.st/o93i.jpg https://0x0.st/o93i.jpg AVIF (100 KB): https://0x0.st/o9xC.avif https://0x0.st/o9xC.avif Maybe JPEG XL will get us closer, but not all the way there, that's for sure: https://0x0.st/o9xd.jxl https://0x0.st/o9xd.jxl - JPEG XL is intended for high quality images, so it is not optimized for this kind of extremely low bitrate (~0.1 bpp) usage.

worldofmatthew 4y ago
I normally deal with 720P images for internet distribution. For 3000x2000 that would be around 230KB to 250KB.
- bscphil 4y ago
  You replied to a thread about a photography website. I don't think 720p images are the norm for that use case. In any event, I don't think the AVIF result at 250 KB is acceptable for photography either: https://0x0.st/o93a.avif https://0x0.st/o93a.avif - There's a ton of smearing and blurring that's very obvious when you're viewing the image at full size.
- IMTDb 4y ago
  3000x2000 basically means "fullscreen on a retina display @ full resolution". You can only reasonably show one picture like that at a time. So it's completely OK to have the currently displayed picture at that resolution/size. But all photo should be loaded at a much lower size, initially, and only downloaded at full size the the user puts them in full screen.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    I know lazy loading is in vogue, but as a user it only ever seems to create problems for me. I’d much rather the website download all the images ahead of time on page load, so I don’t have to wait for full quality versions each time I full screen a different image.