Hi all.

Sorry if this has been answered before, but I'm having trouble searching for the answer. Is there a file size limit when it comes to posting pictures? I've been posting a lot of animated gifs lately, and I've been trying to keep the file sizes down to around 5 - 6MB or less, so that it's easier for them to load and uses up less server space. However, it does mean having to reduce the image size down a fair chunk, doing a fair bit of trimming or sometimes bringing the quality of the image way down, which I'd like to avoid if possible.

I'm just wondering if there's a consensus on what the upper limits of file size might be, so I have something to work to. I want to present everyone with the highest standards I can produce, but I don't want to be a server hog.

Just for a recent point of reference, the one recent Bayonetta gif was 48 MB. The Mei one that got posted around the same time as your stuff was 10.6 MB, but had no slowdown when loading.

That's just cherry-picking from recent stuff but you have definitely have room to beef up.

As Lurksalaot said, I've seen some of the more complex GIFs here (from people the likes of Zko or Lobotomist) easily reach 30-40 MBs. I'd say you're probably in the clear, unless you intend to post animated movies or equivalent in the GIF format.

Hmm, looks like I can up my game a bit then. Although I wish I'd known that before posting some of my better stuff at a smaller size :P Ah well.

why not redo them? not like the site hasn't gotten higher resolution versions of old pictures before

if you don't want to be a resource hog; ask to have the old versions deleted; heck, they might be able to transfer over the faves and comments to the newer versions

I personally try to keep the file size of gifs as small as I can without compromising on overall image quality. Not every user has the same quality of internet connection, they could also happen to be using their phone with data limits.

Does the image need to be high resolution? Something with relatively low amount of detail doesn't really benefit from increased resolution. The gifs you uploaded are relatively low detail, so I personally think the current size is fine. Making them 2x bigger probably wouldn't be much of a problem, but larger than that would be wasteful in my opinion.

My gifs usually go up to 40MB post compression (mostly because I'm bad at it) so you should be fine.

But, like others said, a lower filesize is preferable to quality imo.

Twice as big would be too much, I think. The first one I posted was around 1200 pixels wide, and it looked massive when it was uploaded, so I took it down. I usually go for 400 pixels now, but maybe I could go with 600? It's not that I want them lifesize or anything, just that I think they might look better if they were a bit bigger.

Alternately, you could stick with the smaller files, and include links to higher quality mp4s or webms in the source or comments, hosted on gfycat or something.

We can only transfer favorites comments are lost sadly.

k, better than nothing

I gun for 640 whenever I tried to do gifs for tumblr, and then going to 320 if needed.