actually a lob can go up to 2GB. Byteas are limited to 1GB.
I store images and other binary data in the db all the time, when this is closely associated with data in the db and needs to be maintained together. Usually these files are store once, retrieve seldom. However for practical purposes I would not recommend going above a few megs on a bytea field. lobs are easier because you can seek in them, but access will never be as fast as it would be directly from the filesystem.
Comments
1 GB. You can see the other limits here:
http://www.postgresql.org/about/
actually a lob can go up to 2GB. Byteas are limited to 1GB.
I store images and other binary data in the db all the time, when this is closely associated with data in the db and needs to be maintained together. Usually these files are store once, retrieve seldom. However for practical purposes I would not recommend going above a few megs on a bytea field. lobs are easier because you can seek in them, but access will never be as fast as it would be directly from the filesystem.