User:Drat/Image resizing

I see so many articles using infoboxes and similar templates, especially computer and video games related ones, in which there is so much white space in the box, around the images. Often the source image is much larger than what is shown in the article, and all that size and detail is being wasted, unless the reader views the image infopage itself. Resize these images and fill out the white space in the infobox! It looks nicer and gives a better view of the image. Be careful, however, not to expand the image so much so that the infobox is expanded beyond its normal size. It could really mess up the formatting in an article.

Experimentation may be needed to find the best size for particular infoboxes, but I've found that a width of 250 pixels works best for articles using the Computer and Video Game Infobox. When more than one image is used in the infobox, divide the total pixel width by the number of images, to get the width for the individual images.

Filesizes
When an image is shown at a smaller size in articles, the result is an automatically created, smaller (in dimensions and filesize) version of the source image, not the source shown at a smaller size. When the image is made larger (but still smaller than the source image), there is of course, an increase in filesize and download time compared to the previous version. But these days, faster Internet connection methods are becoming more and more commonplace, and such problems are becoming less severe. A lot of this depends on the size of the source image. Some are only around 20 kilobytes, while others number in the hundreds. I leave this up to the individual editor to decide, or debate with other editors. We of course want Wikipedia to be accessible to all, and it doesn't do much good if a 56k'er has to wait three minutes to load an article (an exaggeration, but you get my drift).

When the image is shown at a larger size than the original, it is actually the original being displayed at the larger size (standard HTML resizing). This way, the image is not made larger than the original. So feel safe about increasing the size of a small image, unless it becomes really ugly, due to lack of detail.

IMPORTANT! Some formats do not work so well with being downsized. This is particularly true of low-colour PNG images. Due to the way that ImageMagick (the image software Wikipedia uses) rescales images, the filesize of a downsized version can end up larger than the original. Case in point, the boxshot for Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri is shown at the full size of 259 pixels wide, and is 27.7 KB. Downsized to 250 pixels, the resultant image is 118 KB. This is nothing for those of us on ADSL, but a real pain for dial-up. The full size of 259 pixels doesn't expand the infobox anyway. You should experiment somewhat with this though, as some images are affected less than others. Also, sometimes an image filesize is so small in the first place, that doubling or even quadrupling the filesize makes little difference.

Edit summaries
Help get others in on this idea by putting the following (or a variant) in your edit summary when you make an edit:

 Infobox white space elimination (You can help!)