Posted by Barry Vangrov on December 1, 2009 at 2:28 PM
I'm having a sharpening for Web problem that is becoming rather frustrating: When I post an image in one of the NPN galleries or forums, the image as it appears after uploading is not as sharp as the original image before uploading. I can place the two images side by side on the screen and there is a easily recognizable difference in sharpness. I don't have nearly as much of a problem with the images I upload to my website so it seems to be more pronounced uploading to NPN. It's frustrating for my image posts to not look their best. Any ideas what's going on and how it fix it? Thanks!
I looked at several of your images and some are suffering from jpeg compression. I also noticed some haloing due to oversharpening in a couple of them. Highly detailed images may look somewhat soft due to the effect of downsizing and compression to fit within the NPN posting guidelines. You have some nice work!
Perhaps it would be helpful if you posted the steps you use to prepare an image for posting. We may then be able to give you suggestions that will help improve the quality.
Personally, I do not upload to the NPN server. I upload to my website and link to the image when I post here. I do this for couple of reasons. One, I can more eaisly update my site by having the image already there, and second, I am not bound by the 200KB NPN file size limit (most of my images are in the 250KB range).
I do upload my Portfoilio.Net images to their server and I have not noticed any difference in color and/or image quality. Honestly, I can't think of any reason why they should be different unless the image upload script does somthing to the image.behind the scene. Only Jim could answer this.
-P
Posted by Jim DeWitt on December 1, 2009 at 4:11 PM
I think you have two problems, based on a quick review of your images. First, you need to re-think your post-processing. There are a lot of archived threads on preparing shots for NPN. My modest contribution is here. When you re-size, in particular, make certain you use (in PS) Image > Image Resize, and that you have checked Constrain Proportions and Resample Image and have selected Bicubic from the pop-up.
When you save the files for the web, use PS's File > Save for Web, check the Optimized checkbox and adjust the slider for the compression closest to 100% that meets the 200KB (720 pixels) 500KB (500 pixel) limits. In all but the most detailed shot, you should get 75% or better.
Discussion
2 repliesI looked at several of your images and some are suffering from jpeg compression. I also noticed some haloing due to oversharpening in a couple of them. Highly detailed images may look somewhat soft due to the effect of downsizing and compression to fit within the NPN posting guidelines. You have some nice work!
Perhaps it would be helpful if you posted the steps you use to prepare an image for posting. We may then be able to give you suggestions that will help improve the quality.
Personally, I do not upload to the NPN server. I upload to my website and link to the image when I post here. I do this for couple of reasons. One, I can more eaisly update my site by having the image already there, and second, I am not bound by the 200KB NPN file size limit (most of my images are in the 250KB range).
I do upload my Portfoilio.Net images to their server and I have not noticed any difference in color and/or image quality. Honestly, I can't think of any reason why they should be different unless the image upload script does somthing to the image.behind the scene. Only Jim could answer this.
-P
When you save the files for the web, use PS's File > Save for Web, check the Optimized checkbox and adjust the slider for the compression closest to 100% that meets the 200KB (720 pixels) 500KB (500 pixel) limits. In all but the most detailed shot, you should get 75% or better.
HTH.