# More of casual interest than if it breaks anything
## ZenPhoto 1.6.5 and compatible ZPBootstrap

I keep getting shouted at by my hosting provider for exceeding my storage limit. Although the size problem is not relevant to ZenPhoto, while I was investigating and clearing out unwanted files, I noticed that the (Full) cached image was consistently a lot smaller than the one in "albums" although of the same dimensions. On screen, the two appeared identical apart from the cached one having the watermark (the whole point of caching, as explained in https://www.zenphoto.org/news/caching/)

For example, 109095E.jpg in "albums" is 1,896 KB and has dimensions of 3,000 by 1,955. 109095E_FULL.jpg in "cache" is 962 KB but with the same dimensions.

I'm assuming that the caching process (in addition to adding the watermark) is using a higher compression algorithm.

What I'm scared of is that a later upgrade will "fix" this and my cache suddenly double in size!

Alternatively - am I wasting time and storage space by uploading an unnecessarily detailed image to "albums" which is never presented directly to the end user?

We don't modify the full image on purpose because any theme or plugin can request its own sizes so you might need them again. Also if re-generating images because you change watermarks for example.

Full images are basically only cached if you apply a watermark to them to avoid doing that process again everytime.

If you don't need to sell hires photos or something I suggest to already upload smaller images in px size. Probably 2000x2000px should do for most (and also lowers processing power on the server) I would not to compress them too heavily because caching (= resizing) also compresses. You can set the compression level via the options yourself).

Zenphoto also supports webp images (if your server graphics libs do) that modern browsers support. You can also choose to create the cached images as such. Unless you need to care of visitors with very old browsers.

Many thanks (again...)

(I keep the original ~3 MB file with a similar file name if ever needed commercially)

As long as you update the full image with the exact same name you could just re-upload smaller ones to your albums folder. ZP should just use them as before. You could download and re-upload all albums that way.

But if doing such changes you should close your site via the maintenance mode because during re-upload the images might be gone for some seconds so ZP "might" trigger on that if you got vistiors in that exact time.

> (I keep the original ~3 MB file with a similar file name if ever needed commercially)

Always a good idea. I would even keep a folder with the same structure of the albums folder locally as a backup.

>But if doing such changes you should close your site via the maintenance mode because during re-upload the images might be gone for some seconds so ZP "might" trigger on that if you got vistiors in that exact time

Thanks - good to know

> I would even keep a folder with the same structure of the albums folder locally as a backup.

I do... In fact, one of the original Hi-Res images and another (same format) of 'for publishing'

>As long as you update the full image with the exact same name you could just re-upload smaller ones to your albums folder

For clarity, I assume you mean by FTP or similar (I'd imagine the ZenPhoto upload re-populates the database)?

We've quite a few ZP Admins with upload rights but only two with FTP access and I'm trying to manage expectations!

> For clarity, I assume you mean by FTP or similar (I'd imagine the ZenPhoto upload re-populates the database)?

Yes, if uploading the same image via the backend it should result in a renamed duplicate since it already exists.

Zenphoto matches the database with the filesystem.
https://www.zenphoto.org/news/caching/

Thanks