Shouldn't I put images in my Tinderbox?

Hi

If you paste a 10KB jpeg image into a single note created with Tinderbox, the file size will be 5.6MB.

The problem is that if I paste dozens of images into Tinderbox, the file size goes up to almost 1GB and the memory usage goes up by the same amount. This makes it impossible to work.

Is it wrong to paste images into Tinderbox?

General advice is don’t place images in notes unless your really need to, and if you do make them no larger than they need to be. Tinderbox $Text is intended for text, so not optimised for in-note image storage.

Personally, I store images outside the TBX and either link to them via a URL or File type Displayed Attribute or use an export folder to view the image with/instead of text in text pane Preview mode.

I have found that importing only images or linking from DEVONtink does not strain the memory.

I use a lot of charts and tables in my notes, so I may need to change the way I make notes.

Thank you very much.

That said, small images are not a big deal.

Please send that 10KB image to support at tinderbox@eastgate.com; I would not be surprised that it took 20K or even 40K, but 5.6M is remarkable! I’d like to examine what’s happening. (The underlying issue is that we can’t compress images very well in Tinderbox.)

Tinderbox doesn’t have much insight into images — agents can’t ask questions like “might any images in this note contain a dog?” So they aren’t the main thing, but of course sometimes it’s helpful to see an image. One classic use-case is visual references for a comic book writer; you want to see what the characters looks like as your writing the book.

Hi @Victor, I do too. My workaround with that has been what @mwra referenced above, to link to the images and then preview them in Tinderbox. All you need to do is use HTML tags or markdown and specify the page to the image. You can then preview the image in Tinderbox.

Here is an example:

Here is a TBX file with to smaller examples: TBX L - Working with Markdown and templates in Tinderbox.tbx (147.8 KB). This file shows the strategy for linking an image in markdown and in HTML. You can then use the preview to view the images.

HTML <img src="/Users/michaelbecker/pandocSP/mBecker.jpg" width=50px>"

Markdown ![Becker](/Users/michaelbecker/pandocSP/mBecker.jpg){width=50px}:

There are a couple of training videos on this too.

  1. Tinderbox Training Video 12 - Working with media in your TBX files (Part 1) - #10 by webline
  2. Tinderbox Training Video 13 - Working with media in your TBX files (Part 2) - #6 by satikusala

I’m experiencing the same issue and I will send you an example via the support email today.

Pasting one or two images into the Text area of a note seems to result in a dramatic increase of the file size. In contrast, pasting multiple images into the Map as an adornment do not cause such an increase.