SA's poor-quality and pixellated picture sites

We can all agree that due to increased bandwidth availability over the past years, online media quality and quantity have grown substantially. So why the hell are local online publishers dragging their feet and being so schnoep with their bits and bytes?!

Gone are the days of 800×600 resolution! And gone are the days where a 30kb image would take 30 seconds to download!

So why on earth are we, the online readers/viewers, teased, mocked and patronised with titbit sissy little images wherever we look? I’m talking mainly about the photo, the online photo. An unleashed super-tool for viral marketing and an age-old format for … well … a picture says a thousand words, right?

I’m not big on news, but I do get my daily dose of email newsletters and the one thing that generally prompts me to CLICK HERE and look further is a picture gallery. It could be some up-close shots of the September 11 attacks, Kerry McGregor or even a bloody-faced Bryan Habana. But I’m disappointed 90% of the time as the images are so small, speckled and just not worth the tiny amount of bandwidth used to display them.

I’m a designer and I know that it’s simple to find a balance between image optimisation and file size. But even with the modern image-editing tools of our time, local online publishers seem to botch it up. They might as well stop paying professional photographers and rather hire a bunch of infants armed with Nokia N90s to take snaps for them, considering they are going to drop the file size and quality so much it wouldn’t require a high-resolution camera, sturdy hand and good eye.

Sure, image optimisation is important, but I believe it should only be at first sight: in my newsletter or on the home page.

When I click on “I want more images”, I’m making a conscious decision to download photos, view images and spend my bandwidth the way I want to. So why can I not be presented with some nice, crisp, high-resolution images of the content I’m interested in?

Here are just a few of the culprits:

Cartoday.com (450×300 pixels) and Wheels24 (470×288 pixels) both have a huge range of car galleries. It’s just a pity that they are so pathetic on image size and quality. Take a look at SeriousWheels.com and learn how car photos should be viewed — never less than 1 024×768 pixels, with options ranging higher.

Rugby365 (330×233 pixels) offers a wide collection of images, also at a sissy size, and one that should be offering something substantial, despite leading the pack in this debate, FHM offers a staggering … wait for it … 498×332 pixels — pathetic!

Am I a bandwidth brat? Have I no respect and appreciation for the fibre-optic lines and satellites that beam me information? Perhaps I was 10 years ago, when I said that we were not using the internet to its full potential. Back then we had some kak signal transmitting our bandwidth. These days we’ve got the speed, we’ve got the bandwidth and we’ve got talent publishing some amazing stuff in the form of words, images, video and sometimes animation. Why are publishers limiting online publications? There is no end of the page here. No print deadline. No maximum pages per issue. Someone please tell me?