Image Share

Hi, i am building a very small instant messaging app.

Users can sent either text or images to each other.

What do you think would be a good size to crop the images to? Thanks in advance for your help.

This is a hard one to answer. The big thing is the amount of data you need to transmit. You'll probably want to test different image sizes to find a good balance between resolution, compression and total bytes in transit. I know I don't want to upload a 5meg image to someone through a message unless I specifically desire to send a full resolution. Try to find a range that will give the best bang for the buck and look decent on the screen. Retina screens will show more flaws in the image from scaling and compression so really, testing is the key here.

I'd probably start at 800x600 and work my way down or up. Perhaps have it send at a low resolution but give the user the option to send a high res version of the image, and the receiver the opportunity to accept/reject a high res image (ie: if I'm running low on data and someone sends me 100meg worth of images (might be 20 images at 5meg a piece) I might not want to accept them.