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Tip From Cee – Help! I’m running out of memory.

A few people have asked me recently “how do I save memory on my blog, because I’m nearly out of it”. The answer is not simple, but there are ways to save memory, especially if you post a lot of photographs.

The one thing I notice most people don’t do is save their .jpg (photo) small. I see a lot of people photos taking up well over 1 mb or more of memory. Newer cameras and phones are taking photos well over 10-20 mb of memory per photo. That will use up your memory super fast. Most of your post processing software that comes with your computers or phones will give you an option to save your photo to a smaller size.

For example, the software that comes in the Adobe packages (Camera Raw, in Bridge) when I go to safe a .jpg there is an Image Sizing Option. I standardly size mine for Pixels at 700 wide to 700 height. This means my photo will never been wider or longer than 700 pixels. It will size appropriately depending on the configuration of your photo. Like for this photo (4×6) crop it sized my photo to 700 wide x 467 height. I never put the resolution (if you have that option) lower than 300 pixels per inch.

I’ve been saving my photos this size on my blog for years. I do it for basically two reasons. The first reason is to save memory space. The second reason, if someone wants to download any of my photos, it won’t print clearly if they want to print it bigger than 4×6. That also eliminates the need to watermark my photos. Since you are posting your photos for electronic media, they still come out wonderful.

I have about 8 years of photos on my blog. I have the package that has 13 gb of memory. I’ve only used 40% of my memory.

NOTE: I know I won’t cover them all, space saving ideas, so please feel free to add comments below and tell us how you save memory.

Now more specifically for WordPress (WP) bloggers. There are some decisions you will need to make. Money is a hot topic, especially with the prices going up on everything because of Covid and now world politics and war. I would never encourage you to spend money when you are uncomfortable doing so. I know that WP free blog for new members only has .5 gig of memory. It is obviously not a lot of memory for photographers.

There is a new package that costs $4 a month. That is less than price of a latte or glass of wine. It offers you 6 gig of memory. In today’s society I think that is not a bad option. The 6 gig of memory is probably what I have used up in 8 years of blogging and saving my photos small. So you can kind of judge how much memory you’ll be using if you compare your blog to the amount of photos I post. There are other plans, you may want to check out as well.

One thing I do not do is reuse my photos even if I already have the photo in my wordpress photo gallery. I find I tend to get a lot more spammers if I re-use them. So I simply add a new photo.

I hope this helps out some people who are asking questions. Please feel free to comment and if need be I can come up with a part two to this.

Please check out some of my other Tips from Cee.

I’ve gathered a list of challenges and their hosts.  So if you know a challenge host, please direct them to my blog.  Feel free to contact me anytime.  I hope everyone will be able to use my lists.

Qi (energy) hugs

Cee

92 replies »

  1. Police your posts is my suggestion. Some posts have a limited period of relevance. For example from my blog, there’s no point in retaining a post about a football match that happened 5 years ago – it no longer has any relevance even for the nostalgic fans of the club. So I delete those torts of post and any associated images. I’m just about to reach the ‘upgrade’ point with 3gb of images – It’s something I have been thinking about for a while and I shall probably be doing that – after all, I pay for pro on Flickr; Why should WordPress be any different 🙄🤣

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      • I had a rethink on that Cee – Now I’m linking in the photo’s for posts from my Flickr account. The new Block system makes it so much easier than we used to have to do some background HTML to achieve the same 😎 I am still going back through my old posts and deleting those which are no longer relevant too because certain posts will still need images saved to WordPress – Brian’s last on card comes to mind 😉

        Liked by 1 person

  2. Hey Cee. When we were travelling around Australia, my internet allowance per month was so lousy that I started uploading smaller images to help ensure I could continue blogging all month. It’s a habit I never got out of, and one I’m happy I adopted. I do take large photos and feel the software I use to reduce their size doesn’t compromise their quality too much. Yes, I’m on the legacy Premium plan, but in eight years, I’ve only used 18% of my allocated space. Looking forward to many more happy years of blogging and sharing photos.

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  3. I’ve always resized my photos for the web. I keep the originals on my computer and the resized ones for WP in its own folder so I know which ones I’ve already used. I also reuse photos in the WP library. As others have said, you can store photos elsewhere and link to them from your post. (There are options in the editor.)
    I couldn’t upload straight from my iPhone for long; the photos are 4032 X3024 and anywhere from 2Mb-5Mb each. There are all sorts of photo editors to help you with resizing. You definitely want to have aspect ratio on or your photos will be distorted after resizing. I really wish WP would tell us if we have duplicates in our library. That may be a big reason why folks are running out of space too. But it behooves them for us to run out of space.
    I learned that even if you delete a duplicate, the remaining photo doesn’t replace the deleted one on the post even if they’re the exact same file.

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    • It’s because of where the photos are placed in the database. the photos are attached to your post and not as an individual jpg. So for example your photo URL would be thenameofyourblog,date.nameofpost.imagename.jgp
      That is also why it doesn’t see duplicate photos.

      Liked by 1 person

  4. Hi Cee, this is a fabulous conversation. I have the Premium plan which is $99 per year. I love it. I’ve used 27% of my space in 10 years of blogging. At that rate, I should be able to blog for another 20 years before I need to upgrade. LOL. I’ve always used Photoshop Elements or Bridge to resize my photos. I did not know about not reusing photos. I have done that regularly to save space. I do get some spammers, and I have cut comments off at 30 days because of it. That seems to have cut them back enormously. Thanks for this great topic. It was fun to read all the comments from so many expert photographers.

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  5. I want to thank you for posting this. It has already helped me so much! Looks like I will need to spend some time removing old media and and saving it at a lower resolution and adding it back to my post. Thanks for the super timely post.

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  9. A few months ago, I purchased the 6 GB plan as I was running out of space. Generally I reduce my images to 1028 pixels on the long side. For those who archive folders in another app like Flickr or Smugmug, it is possible to link to those images from WordPress so they appear in your post, and if you click on the image, you’ll see the original on the host site.
    I now only load the opening image into WordPress on my posts, and link to all the rest. The advantage of an archival site is that your images are stored in original resolution and act as an offsite backup for your photos.
    I reuse photos from previous posts when appropriate and haven’t noticed an increase in spam, but then again, I get a lot of spam to delete. Not sure if it’s the reuse of photos or my “popularity” as a blogger… >grin<

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      • I pay for that extra storage space on Flickr. However, if I can use it on WordPress, that saves me from upgrading there. I am at 79% of the 6 GB on my plan. It wouldn’t be much longer until I need an upgrade if I continue to store all of my images in my media folder in WordPress.

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  10. I don’t know if anybody has mentioned it already, but for new blogs it has been changed, from 0.5 GB to 1 GB, it seems. A little better but still far from 3 GB what it was until April. I find this appalling. I’ll just have to open new blogs three times more often as I’ve done so far (six blogs in eight years). Only in the last two years I’ve been compressing my photos up to 80%, which is most excellent. As for payment, no thanks. I work so much for my blog and then I’d have to pay for it too? Thanks for this topic.

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  13. Cee’, I save my images on my computer and cloud at 300 ppi in case I ever want to use them for print media, but the standard web size is 72 ppi.and that’s how I save them in my WP media file.

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  14. Very helpful Cee. I’m approaching 100% of my limit and been wondering how to proceed. I remember this happening to me on blogger too and I don’t know what I did but somehow I managed to correct it by not letting blogger save my photos on my limited space. It worked exactly the same for me but freed up the available space. I wish I could remember how I did that….more than 10 years ago now.

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  15. Wow, this is insightful Cee. I got a little training on Lightroom and it was suggested to save my photo with a resolution of 72 pixels per cm, which must till be too big because I’m at 82% and I keep having to delete older posts and photos. I need to figure out what you are doing! I’ve only been blogging for about 4 years. Thank you!

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    • You are probably putting your DPI (dots per inch) at 72 pixels. That doesn’t make a difference unless your print it out. You need the file size to be smaller. Write me at ceeneuner@me.com and we can figure out how to save it in Lightroom. I don’t use it, but I have access to it.

      Liked by 1 person

      • I think I figured it out Cee! I have the same little box you put in your post, in Lightroom. And to think I thought I was saving it in a smaller size! They don’t seem quite as sharp (I experimented) but I’m running out of space so I need to do something. Thank you so much!!

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  16. Large photo files are even worse than you think. WordPress makes smaller sized copies and stores them all! For some of my large files there are as many as half a dozen smaller ones. Files need not be larger than 2560 pixels wide – WordPress will not use them and will make and store resized smaller copies.
    There is no need to worry about resolution, DPI. That is of value only when printing (and even then it is obsolete for non-commercial printers). That setting does not affect the file size, it does not affect the quality, only the pixel setting does.

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  17. After 12 years at 13 GB memory, I’ve only used 35% and I’m thinking of making the size even a bit smaller from 900 pix to 700. It seems like a big deal (if you’ve never done it) to resize pictures, but it really gets to be almost automatic after you’ve been doing it for a while — and it’s worth the effort.

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  18. I do reuse my old photos but I don’t get a lot of spam, well it goes straight into Askimet so I never see it. I would like to understand why doing that creates more though. Since I lost the HDD that I stored a lot of my old photos on many of them only exist on WP now.
    I have nearly 9 years’ worth of photos and although I went from the free to the personal and now the Premium plan with 13GB I started resizing my photos a long time ago. There are two ways I do this. At first, I used a program called “Fast Image Resizer” which was recommended to me by a friend. It’s free. I still use it sometimes if I’m just grabbing a couple of photos for a post. However, these days I mostly do it through my photo editing program ” In Pixio Studio 11″. I have used about a third of my 13GB on each blog so I should be OK for this year. Unless WP does come up with an intermediate plan by this time next year, I will have to make a hard decision about what to do when my plans expire. I don’t want to delete posts or media but unless I buy the expensive business plan I may have to. There has been a lot of discussion about this between bloggers recently and I know that many are saying they may move from WP or even give up blogging rather than pay that $180 a year which WP won’t let you pay monthly. It’s an issue that is not going to go away.

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  19. That is very interesting and informative. I upload my photos from other files, so had never seen the dimensions in WordPress. I don’t seem to be able to change them, now. Is that right? I think I’ll have to go back on do one of their online courses, to see how to save directly into media, before posting.

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  22. Very helpful, Cee. It’s also important to note that you can’t save space by resizing photo already out there. WordPress will save both copies.

    I found your comment about reusing photos worrisome. I do reuse mine, since the originals are likely archived off my computer.

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  23. You can also use Microsoft Paint which comes with every Windows computer. Open your picture in Paint, click on Resize, a dialog box opens where you can change the size. Click Pixels and enter your desired number, make sure that “Maintain aspect ratio” is ticked–it is by default but still make sure it is selected, if you then enter for example 1000 in the Horizontal box, the Vertical will adjust itself as it is keeping the aspect ratio. It can reduce the size of your photo from something like 5MB to just a few hundred KB. Obviously, save the file–I recommend saving it under a different name, so that you still keep your original larger photo. (I personally have a separate folder for all the images I post on my blog). I’ve been doing that since I started my blog in 2015, before I got the Premium plan. Like Cee says, it saves the space, and if someone should download your pic, they only get the small resolution version.

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  24. Thanks for this info! I’ve been blogging for 6 years now and post lots of pictures. I didn’t understand much about media file size when I started and regularly posted gigantic pictures. It was only when I saw my storage being used up too quickly (even on a paid plan) I realized my error and went back and began to resize pics and update older posts. Yes, it was quite a project, but it saved lots of space. I now use Lightroom to resize pictures.

    I’m happy that my current premium plan gives me 13 GB. Unfortunately, for new WP users, there will only be a Free plan with 1 GB storage, and a single Pro plan for $15 a month with 50 GB. This has caused quite a stir in the WordPress Community, but at least for now customers will be able to stay on their existing plans.

    Liked by 1 person

  25. Interesting, but the numbers and maths just goes over my head and I don’t understand any of it. I only take photos with my phone, then upload to WP media. Whatever size it is, is what it is. I’ve been on the Premium plan for a few years, but have completely run out of space. I’ve deleted many many photos, too, but still gives me no more storage space. No new photos from me ever again I guess. I have to reuse old photos. Boo …

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  26. I started to realise this problem quite early on when I started photo blogging (about 2 years into the run). I reluctantly started a sub-blog and split up challenges. This was not satisfying. Then I started to erase old photos (tedious and time intensive and of course, it leaves the old posts “naked”, so to speak – funny enough, I used to get the occasional like from these posts – probably exactly the same effect you notice when re-using photos). And then geriatrix gave me the tip about downsizing for exactly the same reasons you are giving, saving space AND protecting my photos from being downloaded without permission. 😁

    Liked by 2 people

    • To maintain the proper aspect ratio, equal sides may distort the photo. For images that I upload to WordPress, I set the width to 600, and the software automatically adjusts the proper height so that the final dimension may be 600 x 585. It looks nice, too, having a uniform width (if posting multiple images) — and the correct aspect ratio maintains the contextual view of the original image.

      Liked by 2 people

  28. I also reduce the size (to 600 wide), or link image to an external URL (Flickr) so that the photo is not even stored in the media library.

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    • I know there are people who link to an external URL. I’ve just never done that. It seems to complicated for my brain to keep two different sites going. But I know a lot of people do it quite easily. Thanks for your input.

      Liked by 2 people

  29. Thank you for this, Cee, but you touched on something. I will sometimes go back and reuse a photo from my WP gallery, and I have gotten spammers on certain posts. What is the connection with spammers and reused photos?

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  30. Cee
    If I save a picture at 700 x 700 pixels would it automatically change it to 467? Also, I usually save images for online use at 100 ppi would that work or is 300 ppi necessary? This is timley since I’ve run out of room on my 13 g plan. I’m now deleting blogs from years and years ago.

    Liked by 1 person

    • That’s a good question. I used the photo program in my computer. When I resize a photo (before I post it), I keep the box checked that says ‘maintain aspect ratio’ and even though I change the width to 750 (the size I use), the height is always adjusted but not even to 700. Am I saving memory doing that, Cee?

      Liked by 1 person

    • If you delete posts you will lose views. Something to consider if you are a stat person. Make sure you delete the photos too. Deleting a post doesn’t delete the media files. Only the text. What I’ve done in the past is delete the photos from the media library Beware this can take a lot of time, since you can only delete 20 at a time. Then I will “make private” the posts that I deleted the photos from. That way, I don’t loose the stats (yes I’m a number person). Again you can only do this for 20 posts at a time.

      I figured if I ever use my memory up, I’ll just go to the more expensive plan.

      Liked by 2 people

      • HI Cee, all good stuff here! I know I save my images too large and I will start making that change. I just deleted very old images from 2014 and some from early 2015. I’m not worried about views from then, it doesn’t matter. There is a batch delete in the media library done by year and I deleted a LOT more than 20 at a time. After deleting media, I can go into the “posts” window and scroll through what I want to delete. The featured image for the post will show the “blank” image icon which means I can choose to delete the whole post.

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      • Ah, I was wondering if deleting the media files would work. Will the post still be available on the blog with the photos? Since I’m not a stats person I might give this a try.

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    • Anne, the actual crop size would depend on the cropping or size of your photo. I try to keep 4×6 because that is straight out of the camera size. However, with cropping to different sizes it varies. Make sure your softwares crops the ratio and it should work right. Your photos show up well, use 100ppi it will save memory. I’m just an old graphic artist and they eye sees a difference at 300ppi. Although computers are 100ppi. It is just hard for me to do that.

      Liked by 1 person

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