Resolution for PC viewing

[TaffyTim]

I have some nice 10 x 8 inch images that I want to put onto a CD for viewing on a PC, either directly via CD or if put onto a website.

I realise 10 x 8 (3000 x 2400 px) is a waste unless being printed so what should I resize the images to?

any help most appreciated

TaffyTim

 

[tdodd]

In my opinion it is best to resize the images so that they fit exactly to the pixel dimensions of the monitor they will be displayed on. That way they will not need a second round of resizing, no doubt with sub-optimal sharpening (or none) to go with it.

I view my photos on a 40" Full HDTV so I always size my photos to fit within a 1920x1080 boundary. If I maintain a 3:2 crop ratio then the pictures will end up at only 1620x1080, leaving black bars at either side. That's perfectly fine. Lightroom does my resizing for me and it is easy to set the dimension limits I need. Of course, with this approach my "portrait" images end up at only 720x1080. For my needs that's perfectly fine too, but the resulting files would not be good for printing.

What would be bad is to have the images just slightly too big and needing to be shrunk down to fit. What would be worse is having them too small and needing to be stretched to fill the screen. Get the sizing and sharpening spot on and you should have some terrific IQ.

If they will be viewed on monitors of unknown and varying sizes then it's better to err on the large side and leave them needing to be shrunk. Probably the max monitor size for most people is 1920x1200 so you could aim for that, or just leave them full size and let the display software figure out what to do.