Updates to our photo distribution system and photo quality

A background on how Photo Distribution works

Historically, the photo distribution experience on Cheercast has been slow for galleries to load and display photos. This is primarily because our system has always served the original quality version of a photo every time you load up a gallery. This means that each time you view a gallery, our site is loading anywhere between 100 and 200 high quality photos to be displayed on the page, all at once. This puts an enormous strain not only on the website itself, but also on your browser and device in general, which can result in your device running slow or photos taking a while to display.

The reason we set the system up this way was because we wanted to deliver the photos in their original, high quality format, and while we still think this is important, we know that we need to strike a better balance between delivering the high quality, original files AND ensuring your experience when accessing our website is easy, fast and efficient.

How Photo Distribution works now

Our updated photo distribution system does the following:

• Automatically copies the high quality, original images in each gallery to a new folder and creates a smaller version (approximately 1,800 pixels wide and around 200KB filesize).
• Delivers the above compressed versions whenever you view a gallery on the Cheercast website
• Delivers the original, uncompressed images when you request to download the entire folder of images.

An example of what this means

Lets say you’re trying to view a gallery that has 100 photos where each photo is approximately 3MB in size. Previously this meant that you were downloading almost 3GB worth of photos on the page when viewing a gallery, which, depending on your internet connection and device, could take up to 5-10minutes to download/view for the first time. Under our new system we’re delivering images that are almost 10 times smaller than the original file sizes, which means that 3GB gallery is reduced to just 40MB total. 

Does this mean photo quality is being reduced?

No, as a large majority of Cheercast users view photos on a mobile device or a screen that is smaller than 1920 pixels wide, its very unlikely that you will notice a difference in quality. Of course, we want to make sure you can still access the high quality versions as well, so you will always be able to do this by downloading the zip files, which will include the original photos as taken by the event photographer.

This process also means that photographers can increase the size & quality of the photos they take, which are accessible to you when you download entire galleries.