Rules of photo-engagement

—1) Facebook first. Facebooked pictures can be big and large resolution; the bigger they are the better.
Sized small they display small. Upload full size — don’t downsize. Smartphone pictures are HUGE; my iPhone pictures are only 72 pixels-per-inch, but huge.
Run ‘em that way, and they display full-screen on Facebook. Downsize and they don’t fill the screen. If tiny they display tiny.
Then —2) Pictures for e-mail. Screen resolution is 72 pixels-per-inch. E-mail runs at 72 pixels-per-inch resolution. Higher rez has to scroll.
For e-mail pictures I downsize that Facebook picture to perhaps 72 ppi by 10 inches wide. Such a picture won’t hafta be scrolled. Scrolled e-mail pictures inflame my old college friend, who thereafter tells me I’m stupid, and inferior.
Finally —3) Pictures for this blog. This blog displays at 72 ppi, and the column is 5.597 inches wide: 403 pixels. Higher than 72 will step on my blurb at right. Same if the pic is more than 5.597 inches wide.
So what happens to an original photo-file, which may be at 300 ppi (the rez of my camera jpegs,) is -a) pretty much nothing for Facebook. -b) The Facebook image gets downsized for e-mail, but not blog-size. Blog-size would display small in an e-mail. -c) The e-mail image then gets downsized to blog-size. E-mail pictures would step on my blurb, and Facebook size pictures would be beyond-the-pale.
This begs the question of when screen-resolution will advance beyond what it is now, and has been since days of yore = 72 pixels-per-inch; adequate, but last century.
Giant leaps move computer technology way beyond what it was a few years ago. My first personal-computer had only a 40-meg hard-drive. This 10-year-old laptop has 500 gigs. That’s 12,500 times my original hard-drive.
Back then everything was packed in an air-cooled box: horizontal desktop or vertical tower. Hard-drives were rapidly rotating discs. Now the entire universe can be stored on a tiny chip. Hard-drives no longer need to be rotating discs.
My Apple G4 tower had a 60-GB hard-drive. I used to brag that was enough to swallow the entire Pacific fleet.
500 GB is HUGE; I’m only at 25%, and that includes hundreds of 300 ppi jpegs my brother and I photographed of trains in Altoona, PA.
A few years ago I drove my cousin’s Apple tabletop. Its hard-drive was one terabyte; that’s 1,000 gigs. I bet by now multiple terabyte hard-drives are available. Which have me asking “for what?” My cousin’s one TB hard-drive was only at 2%; all he was doing was e-mail. That’s like using a Ferrari Formula-One racer as mom’s taxi.
I can safely downrez a 300 ppi to 72 ppi, but I can’t uprez from 72 to 300 ppi. It “pixilates” (“jaggies”).
With picture-files I follow the order noted above, pertinent to what I need. Most pictures only get blog-sized. Facebook and e-mail size are only if I’m gonna do either. Blog-size pictures to Facebook always ran too small. Blog-size pictures e-mailed also ran smallish.
Facebook seems programmed to resize gigantic image-files automatically to screen-size. Upload blog-size (smaller) and Facebook can’t do that. That file had already been downsized.
The old waazoo: “try it and see what happens” —what got where I am today.
Yet screen-rez remains at 72 ppi; adequate, but ancient. So I gotta do all this resizin’ just to get pictures to display right.
Facebook is doing it for me, I guess. Along with plumbing my tastes for Pooty-Poot, and disseminating pro-Trump malarkey. (Why, pray tell, does Facebook surmise me a dirty-old-man just because I’m a 74-year-old male?)
I upload the image-file, and it displays correctly. And it better be gigantic at high resolution, i.e. something Facebook can safely downsize.
I’m not downsizing it myself like I had to do with my wallpaper picture. But Facebook is displaying on a 72 ppi screen.