Do pics eat up space?

[Zeta Kai]

Lately, by request, I've been putting pictures in my threads to illustrate concepts. I've seen it done in other threads, & it really works for me. I seem to recall that I should put images, especially large ones, in spoilers, although I don't recall why. Now, these images are sometimes large (1000px or more per side, in some cases), & there are a lot of them.

My question is this: Does this take up a significant amount of server or bandwidth space? If so, should I cease & desist? As an amateur conservationist, I would hate to think that I am damaging an environment that I love so much.

[Emperor Tippy]

It eats up your bandwidth, not giantitp's. It's not stored on the GITP server.

[Fostire]

Also if the image is too wide it stretches the screen and that's very annoying (or at least to me it is)

[Admiral_Kelly]

Very large images should be spoiler'ed.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

The restrictions are not to protect GiantITP's server space. It's for the convenience of other users. Some people have slow connections and small monitors. Huge images end up taking a long time to load and stretching the width of the screen so that the user must scroll horizontally to see what's on the thread. This makes for a poor experience, especially when there is no warning that a huge image is coming up.

See the Forum Rules (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/announcement.php?a=1) section on Oversize Images and the Avatar and Signature Rules (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/announcement.php?a=39) for the precise image size limits.

[Renegade Paladin]

Images in spoilers still load, so it takes up the exact same amount of bandwidth whether it's in spoilers or not; the spoilers are to prevent those with tiny monitors (:smalltongue:) from having the board format broken.

That said, the amount of bandwidth in question is zero for the board; the [img] code simply redirects to the server the image is located on, and that server's bandwidth is what's used to load the picture.

[Lord Herman]

Why do I keep misreading this thread's title as "Do pigs eat up space?"

Maybe it's a prophetic warning of some kind, foretelling the coming of space pigs that will devour the universe.

[Rawhide]

Correct, they don't take anything up on the server, but the restrictions are to help the other people using the site. Please provide a link to large images, rather than embed them in the post.