sharpness lost in uploading

[jayanti]

At times, and definitely not always, when I upload a photo, its sharpness and color seems to be lost. Apprently

this loss is unrelated to the size. I use a Nikon D40x, and shoot in jpeg mode.

[carbon_dragon]

It helps to add some sharpening in the camera (or in the scanner if scanning film). I also downscale only once from the full size to the size for the upload. Multiple scales seem to lose more sharpness. Then I sometimes sharpen again at the smaller size, but you have to be very subtle there.

 

I'm not an expert, and I can't get the kind of look some here on photo.net get.

[Matt Laur]

Are you talking about uploading the images here? Or to some other web site?

 

Are you sizing the images in advance for display here? If so, are you applying some sharpening to the sized-down file before sending it over? And, what color space are you using on your camera... sRGB, or Adobe RGB?

[jayanti]

Thanks David. I will try it. And Matt, Yes, I am talking about uploading here. I usually add sharpening, if I have to, before sizing down. And about the color space -- well I am not very sure where to look for it and manipulate it. I am new with the DSLR, and I will try to find out exactly what I am doing. Thanks for your response.

[Matt Laur]

If, rather than shooting in RAW, you're having the camera directly create JPGs that you (other than resizing) will be pushing right out where web browsers will see them... definitely make sure you have your camera set to sRGB.

 

As for sharpening... are you seeing the worrisome loss of details on the mid-sized images that photo.net renders, or are you seeing it on the file that's displayed when you click the image for a larger view? Also: how compressed are your files? When you resize them (using what software, by the way?) for viewing here, and save a new JPG for that purpose, how aggressively are you compressing? If you post very large files, I believe that the upload routine here will take matters into its own hands, and use some pretty stiff compression... which will impact the quality of the image.

[julianj1]

In you rearlier work there seems to be artifacts probably caused by successive jpeg compressions. You shoud try starting with RAW for capture (or as large a file as possible) and primary colour, curve manipulation and perhaps some initial sharpening.

 

And Matt is right about colour spaces, generally you would only use sRGB right at the end and only for web postings, and a bigger colour space for capture/manipulation (plenty of debate around about the best one). There is loads of good information on this site about use of colour spaces and sharpening. Also, nothing works better than some study ... a good book and some experimentation. Again, you'll find lots of recommendations on the site for most common software packages. Don't lose heart though, it is a big subject and at the end of the day an image will need different levels of sharpening depending on the final output (e.g. generally need more for printing than screen); you can only learn through painful effort and I'm nowhere near yet (I have the opposite problem to you!)

[jayanti]

Matt, I found out that I have been using sRGB without knowing it. I use either Nero or photoshop for resizing. Now that you ask it, I have a feeling that there is more loss with Nero. Is it possible? I will check next time. Yes, sometimes I do compress quite large ones - about 4000 pixels to the standard 1500 here or even smaller.

 

Would shooting RAW help? If I shoot RAW, what color space should I use?

Thanks a lot.

[jayanti]

Julian, Thanks a lot for your advice and encouragement. I will experiment with different settings.

[ronald_moravec1]

Take the original JPEG and open in lossless photoshop format.

 

Use that as the master and return to it to make each new final size. There needs to be some capture sharpening, Camera or when you first open the file, and then a slight tweek at final size.

 

Make sure they are sRGB.

 

As someone stated, you can not open, change, close JPEGs endlessly.

[steve_lantz]

For a file I plan on uploading to photonet I use sharpening as the final step before saving it. I resize, sharpen, then use Photoshop's Save for Web funtion to save it. I don't think it's a good idea to sharpen and then resize.

[jayanti]

Thank you Ronald and Steve, and all others. I am learning a lot from all of you.