Certification & Pictures, too big, too small.

[Lanval]

Just run into a problem with the pictures I sent in with my certification, causing a problem by being too small.

What I discovered was some of the pictures on my phone are for the Bubbler app, and tend to be in the 100k size, and the others are from my phone camera which are 1-2MB size. The Bubbler pictures show up very small, and difficult to view from what I was told.

When using an Apple product, and this might also apply to a Windows program, sending attachments the default size is small, although you thought you sent a large file the program scaled it down. You have to select Large or Original size.

A downside to sending original size photos might be the mail server not being able to transfer such large size files.

Maybe someone who reviews our certifications, and looks at the pictures we send can better inform us of how well we are doing with the pictures we send.

What Happened: Sent in certification with pictures, received an email informing me that a picture was too small, sent in original but on inspecting my sent email and the attachment size realized that that picture was also too small. Resent picture but this time selecting original size.

 

[Ira]

I'm not one of the verification team. But it seems to me that you have some direct feedback already.

If the total of the photo size is too large for you email system, you have a few alternatives:

Use a utility to reduce the size somewhat. Most allow you to specify the amount;

Send multiple emails with a few photos each. Put something in the subject line so we can identify them as yours; or maybe

Upload them to a cloud account and provide the link so we can download them.

We need to be able to identify what is in the photos, so we may request larger versions. But we wouldn't ordinarily ask you for smaller versions, unless you're sending us photos in raw format where each photo can run 30MB or larger.

Ira Agins
Iron Butt Association

 

[ScottAL]

Combine photos into a single PDF file. You can get very detailed receipt photos in a very manageable size document. For instance, my 48/10 ride had 54 gas receipts, they were all in a 8mb PDF file and you can clearly see every detail of receipt and odometer.

 

[Lanval]

Combine photos into a single PDF file. You can get very detailed receipt photos in a very manageable size document. For instance, my 48/10 ride had 54 gas receipts, they were all in a 8mb PDF file and you can clearly see every detail of receipt and odometer.

Brilliant idea, thanks so much for that @ScottAL

Will have to try that for pictures and see how it turns out.

 

[Mike721]

The PDF is what I use, I put everything into a word document to make it easy to work on, then save it as a PDF when it's finished and send that, it's only a few megs including about a dozen high res pictures.
Never had a problem emailing it or having it accepted.

 

[XPLSV]

With some of the various phones I have used in the past, they will have a default for sending photos. If sending a text message, they will downsize the jpg...while sending via email might leave it larger or possibly even full sized. Starting with the original files gives you the best options...if you start with a text transmitted/downsized file, you might still end up with less than stellar resolution if that is what you put into a pdf. There is also a difference in how a file might look on the screen versus when it is printed, as screen resolution can make a small file look better than when it is printed. I am guessing the certifiers I have had are reviewing my submissions on a computer screen and I have sized my jpg files accordingly and have not had issues up to this point. The utillity programs mentioned by Ira will typically default to 72dpi for a screen resolution photo, although I typically bump mine up to 100 dpi and go for a 12x9 inch image size. If the photo was clear to begin with, that is usually sufficient detail and size to get the info across.