Uploaded photo quality seems to be diminishing

[kevinbriggs]

I have sent an inquiry regarding the following issue directly to

photo.net, but as usual, I have not received any reply. (While I

love this web site, the technical support department has been 100%

UNRESPONSIVE to any of my 5 questions during the past 12 months.

Now that I am a subscriber I thought that this fact would change

things; it hasn't.)

 

During the past couple of weeks whenever I have uploaded a photo

(GIF) -- and only during the past couple of weeks -- the photo

quality seems to have deteriorated through the upload process

(deteriorated considerably!). I have never experienced these

problems before. I'm going through the usual steps in Photoshop

recommended by the web site, i.e. Save to Web, etc., but I'm not

exactly sure what is the problem. (Perhaps someone has an idea

about potential Photoshop settings that may have been

corrupted/changed unintentionally?)

 

Other than this, I have no idea why everything I'm uploading

recently seems to turn out so poorly on the web site in comparison

with what I'm looking at within Photoshop.

 

I guess my question is: other than using the Save to Web function

within Photoshop, is there any other way that photo.net will accept

photo files? Meaning, any other formats, any other processes within

Photoshop, etc.? (I always get the standard error message when

attempting to upload JPEG files.) I'm really getting desperate at

this point.

 

Any suggestions/comments would be most appreciated!

 

Thanks,

 

Kevin

[bobatkins]

Many browsers will only display GIF or JPEG and GIF isn't much use for photo work, so that just leaves JPEG.

 

Have you tried looking at your images in your web browser rather than in PhotoShop? In IE6, click on "File", then "Open", then browse for the JPEG file. Maybe you're using a different color space in PhotoShop. Browsers (at least on PCs) don't use colorspace info as far as I know. Does opening the file in your browser give you the same results as looking at it in PhotoShop?

 

I've never had problems with uploaded images. The again, I don't save them out of PhotoShop...

[mbb]

First: Image>>Mode>>Convert to Profile>>sRGB IEC61966-2>>OK (better colors for web)

 

Second: Use plug-in for the jpeg compression, native ps jpeg is horrible not to mention that you have very little control to set precise size of the compress file.

 

Third: pray that photo.net compression is not going to screw it in the final stage when you are uploading the file.

[weston_harries]

When you upload a photo to your portfolio, photo.net automatically compresses it to make the download times faster and to save space on the server. The only times I've found the compression to be way too much is with photographs that are mostly one color, or one color ie black fading into another color with a smooth gradient... the compression will make the gradient look pixelated. The shot of the star trails in the Rockies in my portfolio is a good example of this. Dont be so concerned about Photoshop, it has nothing to do with this. You can upload a huge high res image or low res and the compression and sizing will happen in both cases. As to why you cant get jpeg files to upload properly, I dont know, they've always worked fine for me. I really wish the compression was less harsh, but hey it costs a lot to host so many photos and a lot of people still dont have broadband, so it's a good idea. Good luck. -WH

[aardvarko]

Bob, you *are* aware that photo.net recompresses JPEGs, right?

[bobatkins]

Yes, I'm aware of that. However I have never noticed significant degradation of images I've uploaded to my portfolio. I've certainly NEVER had one that was so badly degraded that I'd consider it a problem. Most of the time I don't notice any degradation at all.

 

I typically don't save from PhotoShop. I usually save from Micrografx Picture Publisher 8.0. Maybe it does a better job of JPEG compression (or maybe I do a better job of selecting the type and degree of JPEG compression) and maybe it is less prone to accidental selection of non-standard color space. Whatever the reason it's never been an issue for me.

 

I often suspect that some of the reported problems lie in PhotoShop novices not really knowing what they are doing WRT color space and compression more than in the photo.net recompression algorithms.

[julianradowsky]

The GIF file format is not very good for quality photographic images, the standard only caters for 8 bit images (256 colours), images with lots of colours will suffer from severe dithering artifacts and will not look good at all.

 

JPG is much better suited to photographic images, the colour space is 24 bit.

[nomade]

Bob,

 

images **do** suffer in some quality degradation to the compression by the pnet server, like in this shot of mine (one among many):

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/1786214

 

The pixelation around the man and the edge of the dune are not in the original jpeg file. There was no way to avoid this, every size, every quality of the image that I tried, all of them got this problem after uploading it dued to the compression.

 

Other shots had the same problem, the most degraded usually seems to be the edges and the monochrome surfaces.

[bobatkins]

I'm sure there is some degradation (though the image you cite looks pretty good on my monitor).

 

The question is whether it's really of any importance. This isn't a fine art site where you are displaying high technical quality images for downloading. It's a site where you put up images for critique. I don't think any critique worth having would be influenced by any small compression artifacts.

 

If all someone can say is that there appear to be compression artifacts if you look at the image at 300% magnification, then their comments are essentially worthless.

 

Not that I'm saying that compression artifacts are desirable, in fact I'd say that any subscriber image under 100 kBytes should be left alone and not recompressed, but it seems to me that people are making a big deal out of something 95% of viewers will never notice, or if they do notice will ignore. As I said, anyone who focuses on compression artifacts isn't likely to make a comment worth listening to since they are missing the whole point of a photo critique!

[mattvardy]

Bob hit the nail on the head. I think all pnetters who upload images come across this minor dilemma from time to time. I must agree, most pnetters don�t even notice the pixelation, as for those that do; we learn to ignore it, and appreciate the photo as if there was no pixelation. It is not avoidable if you plan on having a portfolio on PN. If the problem persists � deal with it, and hopefully you will learn to ignore it :^)