FTP on the Go Support about Images

Image Stored in the Photos app

Any photos that are stored onto your iPhone or iPod touch by iTunes or the Camera are automatically optimized to display faster and take less space. This means they're converted to 640x480 in either JPG or PNG format (I'm not sure which). If FTP On The Go uploads pictures from your iPhone's photo library, they'll be this size. Photos taken with the camera from within FTP On The Go are at the camera's resolution, so will upload as 1600x1200.

For most people, that's good, so the space on the iPhone isn't filled by big image files that are several MB each. But for photographers, you may want the original image size and quality....

Version 2.x features for Images

2.x has the Saved Files tab. By using the Web or FTP server (turn on using the Settings tab), you can upload images from your computer (or maybe even directly from your camera) to your iPhone at full resolution.

Note that really big images can be larger in size than the data an iPhone program is allowed to use total! I'm not yet sure just where the point is--2MB images should display fine, 10MB won't.* (And it may depend on things like how recently your iPhone was rebooted!) You'll of course be able to store, upload, or download them--but may not be able to view them on the iPhone.

2.x can now also resize photos, either as you upload, or making a resized copy in your Saved Files. Again a really big photo may not resize because of the iPhone's memory limits.

iPhone Memory

But you're saying "My iPhone has 8 or 16GB or 32GB, how can it be out of memory?"
Those numbers are like the Hard Drive on your computer. The other number, that isn't really mentioned and is equivalent to the RAM on your computer, is more like 128MB for the iPhone. (Or 256MB for the iPhone 3GS.) For everything; the operating system, processes waiting to see if you get a phone call or text message, playing music, etc. The amount of memory an iPhone program is allowed to use is just a fraction of that 128MB.

Since the iPhone is #1 a phone, if a program starts to use too much memory, the operating system will kill the program to keep the core functions intact. That's why sometimes an app will close, but the music keeps playing and the phone keeps ringing.

Opening a really big image (many MB in size) can easily use up all the memory FTP On The Go is allowed, and can end up with it being terminated--or just not displaying the image correctly.

* The good news is the newer iPhone 3GS has much more memory--256MB vs 128MB. With an iPhone 3GS, you may still have trouble viewing really large images, but all that extra memory will help a lot!