Question about Flickr / hosts

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  • #2554
    Yoyo
    Participant

    Does Flickr compress images and thereby reduce the quality? I only ask because it seems like my pics are sharper when I up load them than when I down load them. This week in particular, since I’ve got lots of little letters. Is it because I’m too cheap for pony up the cash for Pro? Am I doing something wrong? Should I try png’s instead? Do my pics look more pixelated to you guys? It seems to me that there is bad dithering going on in regions of high contrast, where the black/grey meets white/beige.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/66595318@N07/6683096455/in/photostream
    I was going to upload the original file, but there was an error doing that.

    #44136
    lokisbong
    Participant

    If any thing I think they do some kind of optimization process that tends to make them bigger. I can’t really see what you are talking about on that size picture. I zoomed in 200% on it even with Firefox and it seems fine to me.

    #44137
    Farktographer
    Participant

    Might look into getting some software and just resize it yourself before you upload. Do free accounts have the option of sharing “original” size if they’re small enough? But same as lok – I don’t really see any pixelation. Is there a reason why you uploaded it as such a small image? Is that the size you’re shooting?

    #44138
    linguine
    Participant

    I think you only get the original size file with the pro accounts and they do some compression on all other sizes.

    #44139
    Yoyo
    Participant

    Well, the fine-print is a crop from the full size image, so all the pixels there are right out of the camera. The large one is the upload of the initial crop, and the medium one is rescaled to a Fark friendly size. After poking into this a bit more today, the JPG file I uploaded was 101kB, and downloading it again from Flickr it’s only 36kB, so there’s definitely some fishy things going on behind the curtain. I tried uploading the image again as a PNG, but it still seems to be getting all pixelly between the letters. Maybe I should just buy some server space.

    #44140
    Farktographer
    Participant

    Server space, or a flickr account if it’s cheaper. If you get a flickr account, you can upload and share your “original” file so there’s no resizing other than what you do to it before uploading. If I have an image I think won’t compress down to Fark’s guides, I’ll minimize it to 640 on the width, and adjust quality until I get about 130kb, then upload. Never had an issue with the image looking different online than it does on my computer.

    #44141
    Yoyo
    Participant

    Ok, I’ve figured out what the problem is. My ISP is being a bunch of cheap bums and shorting me on bandwidth.

    http://totogamboa.com/2011/05/17/check-if-your-internet-service-provider-degrades-photo-quality/
    The blue bird shows visible differences on my computer. Instead of the smooth color transitions in the out of focus areas, I get noticable blotchiness in the second image. Also areas of high contrast like around the bird’s legs get very pixelated. Additionally, when I saved them to my hard drive, the top one was 227kB with exif data and the second one was 21kB. I need to have a word with my ISP, since I specifically mentioned still images when I signed up for the package. My advice, don’t go with Cricket.

    #44142
    sleeping
    Participant

    Does Flickr compress images and thereby reduce the quality?

    The resized images on flickr have sharpening added, for sure (you can see it clearly if you upload an image the same size as one of their standard sizes and check the original vs the sized version). But they aren’t highly compressed – quite the opposite, the quality setting on the resized images is quite high – the 640 px ones are often unreasonably large for use in Farktography

    #44143
    lokisbong
    Participant

    Does Flickr compress images and thereby reduce the quality?

    The resized images on flickr have sharpening added, for sure (you can see it clearly if you upload an image the same size as one of their standard sizes and check the original vs the sized version). But they aren’t highly compressed – quite the opposite, the quality setting on the resized images is quite high – the 640 px ones are often unreasonably large for use in Farktography

    Which is why I resize each entry down to 640 wide and reduce image quality down to 100 kb or so. The don’t change those usually. I then post the 640 version and usually link to the full size version in a popable link.

    #44144
    Yugoboy
    Participant

    Interesting. I reduce my pix down to between 800-1000px if possible and file size to 100-120kb. Upload to Flickr and use the 640 size. It doesn’t seem to be overly cruel to the clarity of the pix in question. (And if Flickr does some added sharpening, that would explain some of that.)

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