# Help!!! Photo quality is lagging on sites such as Facebook!



## vhagen (Jul 30, 2010)

Does anyone know how to get the images to look crisp and clear on Facebook and or other sharing sites? I ask this because my photos look amazing when they arent posted to a site like facebook but when I do put them on there a lot of the quality dissapears? Does anyone know why or how to fix it?


Also, I shoot in RAW and save the file as a PNG file.. is there anything wrong with posting or saving/converting it into this file? if so how do I save it as a JPG even though its raw? I would LOVE LOVE LOVE some input! thanks!


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## natural.disaster (Jul 30, 2010)

I think mine looks fine uploaded to facebook....
Here is a link to one of mine if you want to check and compare it to the quality of yours. Of course mine wasnt perfect to start with..but looked pretty good to me. 
Misty Boland | Facebook


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## shmne (Jul 30, 2010)

What software are you using for your photos? If it handles RAW files, than it should be able to convert them into jpeg. 

I'm not sure if facebook supports uploading pngs (pngs have a lot of information that need to be read to display properly). Though facebook is known to destroy image quality anyway, I can't tell you have amazing the color looks on flickr, but on facebook the color will be just miserable.


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## vhagen (Jul 30, 2010)

Yeah, I just dont understand why the heck they look so bad on FB? heres my link to some of my stuff... go ahead and add me because im private to most users but take a look at my "artfully touched" album.... Im really hating that they look crappy on FB. On disc and on computer by themselves they look way better... I dont get how these other photographers can get their pictures up without the images looking so bad...? 


Misty for some reason it wasnt allowing me to even go to your page? 

Im using CS4 to save my work... and it gives me all the other file saving options except JPG.... dont know what to do?


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## vhagen (Jul 30, 2010)

Vanessa Hagen | Facebook

 heres my FB.. sorry forgot to add in the last thread


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## vhagen (Jul 30, 2010)

Orrr maybe not.... just look for vanessa Hagen on there. theres a pic of me with two other gals in the pic...


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## lordfly (Jul 30, 2010)

Your profile isn't public, ergo we cannot see the photos.


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## vhagen (Jul 30, 2010)

yeah ill have to make that album public so I can get some critque.... for some reason MOST of the photographers I have met have been ever so rude to not want to share how they are able to learn to take the shots they take and make them look amazing... I know everyone has their own way of doing things BUT why do they have to be so rude!?


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## Noonz (Jul 30, 2010)

PNG would be the best file format to save images to facebook(saves a lot of the quality). The best thing you could do is reduce the size of your images according to the default sizes on facebook (which is 720x463 - landscape) or something close to that. When you upload larger files, facebook compresses them. If they didnt, i dont think the Facebook server would be able to withhold so many millions of photographs people upload from all around the world..


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## vhagen (Jul 30, 2010)

its publicly available to veiw at least it should be on FB.... Vanessa Hagen and then the "artfully touched" album


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## vhagen (Jul 30, 2010)

Noonz said:


> PNG would be the best file format to save images to facebook(saves a lot of the quality). The best thing you could do is reduce the size of your images according to the default sizes on facebook (which is 720x463 - landscape) or something close to that. When you upload larger files, facebook compresses them. If they didnt, i dont think the Facebook server would be able to withhold so many millions of photographs people upload from all around the world..



Thats true... I usually go to at least a 900x1300 somewhere in there when I reduce the file size in CS4 they look amazing when they ARENT on FB... but when they are on there it looks bad  It makes my stuff look bad to others! Theres a friend of mine on FB who does photography and for some reason her photos look amazing uploaded to FB? I dont want to ask her to many questions because for some reason she feels maybe somewhat uncomfortable answering them?  She is self taught but im also self taught... you can go to my blog spot and see some pictures on there I think they look way better than when I have them posted on FB


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## KmH (Jul 30, 2010)

Facebook is a social networking web site, much more so than a photo sharing web site, and is not optimized for displaying photos. :thumbdown:


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## SwissJ (Jul 30, 2010)

Noonz said:


> The best thing you could do is reduce the size of your images according to the default sizes on facebook (which is 720x463 - landscape) or something close to that. When you upload larger files, facebook compresses them.


+1

My Facebook and Flickr images look virtually identical.  I just use JPG.


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## Dao (Jul 30, 2010)

What are the resolution of the photos you uploaded to facebook?  That maybe the issue.  Try not to upload a big photo so that facebook need to resize it for you.  The resizing maybe the cause of the loss of photo quality.

Maybe try not to exceed 800x800


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## Flash Harry (Jul 30, 2010)

To save as jpeg from raw you need to change mode from 12/14 bit to 8 bit (IMAGE_MODE in ps) once you've edited the shots, then resize and sharpen your image, 72dpi/ppi for web use and at the size required by fb, like another reply said fb and nearly all image hosting sites will compress your pics if you don't, making them look crappy, try not to oversharpen too. H


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## JG_Coleman (Jul 30, 2010)

Well, I had the same problem for a while. Most of the issue is a result of the photos being resized by Facebook, which uses some type of resizing algorithm that doesn't do a very good job of maintaining sharpness. The best way to prevent this problem is to resize your photos yourself so that Facebook doesn't need to resize them for you.

So, given that, the next obvious question is: "What dimesions do I resize them to?"

Well, there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to that question... and here's why. The actual dimensions of a photo on Facebook will vary depending upon the aspect ratio of your image. Images that are 4:3, for instance, will be resized to different dimensions than images that are 8:5 (1.6:1) or 16:9.

So, what you need to do is go onto Facebook, go to a photo you uploaded, and check the dimensions it was resized to. Then, from now on, resize the photos to those dimensions yourself before uploading them. That way, you have the opportunity to do all the resizing yourself, thus bypassing Facebook's bare-bones resizing algorithm. This will also give you the opportunity to add any post-resize sharpening to clean up any degraded edges.


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## mooseluver24 (Jul 30, 2010)

Try compressing your portraits on Photoshop before adding them or just resize them. Once I started doing that my portraits loaded onto the site beautifully.


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## Emilymarie (Jul 30, 2010)

I had this exact problem, I resized to 720x480 and they looked perfect


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## vtf (Jul 30, 2010)

If you cant use "save As" to save to jpeg see if there is a selection called "save For Web". This will allow you to save to jpeg.


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## Derrel (Jul 30, 2010)

JG_Coleman's got it right I think.


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## robertwsimpson (Jul 30, 2010)

I have a "facebook resize" action in photoshop that resizes and oversharpens all the photos that I'm uploading to facebook.  After they're uploaded, the oversharpening is balanced out by the facebook crapification and all is well with the world.  I can give you the settings if you like.


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