Gallery clarity

[Gue Jam Fowsid]

Hi I was just looking at some of my photos on photoshop and comparing them to the ones uploaded in the gallery. The gallery shots don't seem as sharp.

Is that normal? Maybe i'm just being picky.

[StuartDH]

The images are usually compressed and resized to some extent on the gallery and so your image may be losing a bit of detail in the process.

[eeyore]

I generally apply a tad of USM (unsharpmask) to my gallery uploads after they are resized as the resizing process can reduce sharpness compared to the original image

that said I dont think anyone can really expect a 800-600 pix file (a tad less than 0.5mp) to look as sharp as an original 8Mp image

[matt_xyz]

presumably you're saying that a low res shot in Photoshop looks sharper than the equivalent low res shot on WAB? The only explanation for that would be if you're uploading images greater than 880 pixels wide because then WAB will automatically resize them (to 880 pixels). The best thing to do is to resize your images to 880 wide, sharpen them, and then upload to WAB. WAB will then keep the image exactly as you uploaded it.

If that is what you already do then I can't see why there would be a difference in clarity. Having said that, I know that different software packages reproduce images in very different ways. For instance, images viewed using the Microsoft Windows Explorer viewer always look very soft. In contrast, if I view an image in my stand alone application of Neat Image they always look very sharp. Photoshop is somewhere between the two (to my eyes at least).

Matt

[StuartDH]

Although uploading at 880 will also mean that there isn't a larger view of the photo when viewers clicks on it to see a version that hasn't been resized. Also, if we widen the site's page layout, and we probably will when PC screens get bigger and web-viewing on HDTV becomes more popular with 1366 x 768 and bigger formats, then 880 won't fill a full screen size.

Currently, all original uploads are stored at 75% jpeg compression to keep the file sizes down a bit. We could up it to 80%, but beyond that I don't think there'd be much noticeable difference.

Stu

[Gue Jam Fowsid]

Thank you for the advice guys. I will look into the sharpen tools.

I know the minimum size for photos is 800 x 600, but when i'm in photoshop if I set the width to 880 the height is only 589 pixels. WAB is the rejecting these this size as being too small. If I set the width to 900 then the height is just over 600.

Is that still ok? However, the constrain proportions box is ticked should I untick this box?

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by Gue Jam Fowsid

Thank you for the advice guys. I will look into the sharpen tools.

I know the minimum size for photos is 800 x 600, but when i'm in photoshop if I set the width to 880 the height is only 589 pixels. WAB is the rejecting these this size as being too small. If I set the width to 900 then the height is just over 600.

Is that still ok? However, the constrain proportions box is ticked should I untick this box?

leave the box ticked otherwise you will distort your photos, 900 x 600 will be fine for wab ( I think the max is 1200 x1024) - also note that if you are uploading portrait format pics the width still needs to be 800 min - if you try and upload one 600 wide by 800 high it will get bounced.