The American pika , a diurnal species of pika, is found in the mountains of western North America, usually in boulder fields at or above the tree line. They are herbivorous, smaller relatives of rabbits and hares.
Similar species: Hares, Rabbits And Pikas
By Tom Reichner
All rights reserved
Uploaded Oct 5, 2012. Captured Aug 28, 2010 09:24.
comments (12)
Just a question, not to offend you, but do you use a lower resolution by uploading on Jungle Dragon than on your own website? Because the photos on your own website are very sharp, but they are not always that sharp on this website e.g. this photo compared to http://www.tomreichner.com/Wildlife/Small-Mammals/6752524_Zh2hBV#!i=1005718699&k=Fh5Qw&lb=1&s=XL
I think that's a pity because I love the photos on your website. Can you may be use a bit higher resolution so we all can see your great photos in the way they are really fantastic? Posted 12 years ago, modified 12 years ago
Thank you for your observations and kind comments.
I have my website up now, with the same Pika photo in a window right next to the one here on JD. You are right; the image on my website looks sharper. Actually, the difference I see most notably is in contrast; on my site, there is greater contrast and deeper colors, while here the deeper, stronger tones appear a bit washed out.
The same image was uploaded to each site. I didn't edit it any differently. I use Smugmug to host my website. As they specialize in hosting photography sites, I am assuming that they have certain defaults set so that the images show up better when viewed on computer monitors. Just a guess.
While the resolution I post at is "maximum JPEG quality", the actual size of the image is something that I limit. Unfortunately, I have concerns about uploading a larger image, as online image theft / piracy is widespread. I count on my images for income, and simply cannot afford to put large images online where unscrupulous viewers might lift them via screen captures. Posted 12 years ago
What is your "maximum JPEG quality" in which you upload, how many pixels? I can understand that you limit your actual size if it's your income but the quality shown on screen now doesn't represent your talent.
May be otherwise you can use a small watermark with your name to make image theft a bit less attractive? Posted 12 years ago
For quality, I choose "Maximum".
For size, I selected "700 pixels" for the maximum dimension. I thought this would be a fair compromise between security and viewability. Posted 12 years ago
It's only an upload problem in fullscreen mode where on large monitors, those 700 pixels will be blown up to something larger. That's a seperate discussion, and I fully respect why you do it that way. Posted 12 years ago
First, the perfect situation is as follow: the photographer uploads a photo in a specific format, and that exact file is displayed in the browser without any modifications at the exact same size. The photo will be displayed exactly as uploaded and intended, assuming the sRGB color space is used.
Most photo sites, including JungleDragon, do not work that way. Uploaders may upload their photos in a wide variety of sizes. Next, the photo site (JungleDragon) will resize the photo into specific fixed formats. In JungleDragon there are 6, and the one you're looking at above is one of them.
Resizing (in this case sizing down) will always mean losing detail and contrast. How much you lose depends on the alghoritm used, the original photo, and its dimensions.
To fight this problem, the more advanced photo sites (JungleDragon as well) will apply dynamic sharpening after resizing. The amount of sharpening applied depends on the photo dimensions in the case of JungleDragon. The smaller the resized format, the less sharpening. To appreciate the difference of with or without dynamic sharpening, please check this:
http://ferdychristant.com/blog//archive/DOMM-8GDKM4
However, there is one factor unknown: the content of the photo itself. In some photos, the after-resize sharpening is not enough, and in some photos the sharpening is too much. JungleDragon uses a default that is somewhere in the middle, since JungleDragon is just code, it has no human vision or intelligence to judge a photo.
Another complicating factor lies in dimensions. Resizing a photo down by 50% exactly produces good results, resizing down to 67% gives less than ideal results due to pixel interpolation.
It's a complicated problem. Having said that, it is very likely that bigger photo sites such as Flickr and Smugmug have more sophisticated alghoritms that produce better resize results. This is no surprise given their budgets, and unfortunately, I do not have access to that technology.
However, many sites are actually doing worse by not sharpening at all. JungleDragon is currently doing the best it can, but it's not perfect due to not having acces to closed technology and because there is a non-structured element to the problem: a human's ability to judge the correct sharpness.
Posted 12 years ago
Thanks for the explanations. I now know more about this stuff than I ever did before!
If it would help, I could re-edit some photos, and apply my own sharpening, if you would like. But if I uploaded the new versions, we would lose the comments, tags, title, and description, wouldn't we? Posted 12 years ago
I made a small change to the image processing of JungleDragon. I will spare you the technical details, but I'd be very interested to know if this makes a positive difference. Could you perhaps try? Note that the change is regarding color correctness, not sharpness. Posted 12 years ago