recommended image file sizes on a web page

what do you think is the biggest file size for an image you would display on a page before resorting to a thumbnail? Generally the people that will be visiting the site will be scientists, universities and schools, with a varying degree of access speeds. i was thinking a cap of 50-70K in size. Is that ok?

50-70kb isn't too bad (+/-30kb is rather decent), but something to take into consideration is the number of images per page.
If you have many images, it would be safer (and kinder to those with slower connections) to make use of thumbnails

hth

thats true, thanks for that yeah, my pages will have a varying number of images so i think 30kb is probably more sensible.

Thanks for your help.

KJ

You can also use the "Save for Web" function in Photoshop. An original file with about 100K can convert to a file to about 20K. That might save you some more space.

Its good to keep your page size below 60k, I know thats hard at times but better for slower connections and search engines like that as well. Gotta keep the engines happy right!

The more images you need to show the more you need to lower file sizes or consider 'paging'. If its a bunch of images to be shown e.g pics of a party then I would recommend thumbs.