# Facebook vs. Flickr Image Hosting Comparison



## fokker (Jun 12, 2012)

Just a picture I had on facebook that I noticed looked particularly bad quality. Here is the picture hosted on facebook:









And here is the same photo hosted on flickr:







Both look worse than on my screen in lightroom, but the facebook one is noticeably worse than flickr. Notice the weird compression artefacts in the bottom right of the first one.

And yes, I know it's a bit noisy, but it's at 6400 ISO so the old 5d2 still holds up!


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## Buckster (Jun 12, 2012)

Size, sharpen then upload photos at the native display sizes of the sites you're uploading to so that they don't have to resize your stuff, and you can avoid the types of IQ problems you're seeing.


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## xjoewhitex (Jun 12, 2012)

Facebook doesn't allow as large of photos to be uploaded, or as large of file sizes. If you upload under the limit the quality wouldn't be bothered, but I wouldn't ever consider using facebook as a host for no matter what reason.


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## cgipson1 (Jun 12, 2012)

+1 on what Buckster said... resize before uploading!!! This work for Photobucket too...as well as Facebook and Flickr! If you upload something large.. they compress the crap out of it.. you get crap!


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## bhop (Jun 12, 2012)

I thought it was common knowledge at this point that facebook makes your photos look crappy.  It's not really a 'hosting' site, just a 'sharing' site..


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## Overread (Jun 12, 2012)

All image hosts have limits on the size they display - if you upload photos larger than their limits (in size and or dimensions) then the site will either reject the upload; or they perform their own on-site resizing. Many services (eg facebook) have a poor resizing code, it works but it applies very little correction and, as a result, will soften photos (a lot if from high MP DSLRs). 

Places like Photobucket can be a little better, but still have a poor code for resizing.

Flickr (in my experience) tends to be about the best, however, its still only using a generic code for every picture and thus can make things look less than perfect. 

As said above, its always best to upload resized versions that you've made yourself. You can then also apply your own sharpening both before and after resizing so that the photos look their best online. I generally find that between 720 and 1000 pixels on the longest side is all you need for uploads to the internet.


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## nehas8 (Jun 16, 2012)

Flickr over Facebook anyday! Facebook is good for sharing photos with friends and family. If you have a fan-page, it is a great tool to connect with your followers. But when I want to host my images - it will be never be facebook.


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## micky21 (Jun 18, 2012)

Flick is best for hosting photos ... facebook is good to share the photos with friends !


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## Sw1tchFX (Jun 18, 2012)

bhop said:


> I thought it was common knowledge at this point that facebook makes your photos look crappy.  It's not really a 'hosting' site, just a 'sharing' site..



Exactly. This is one of those "duh, it's facebook" kind of things. Facebook generally has over 250 million photos uploaded to its servers per day, that's 2,893 photos _per second_. Now imagine if each of those images were 500kb a piece. 


OF COURSE THEY'RE GOING TO COMPRESS THEM!!!!


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## Solarflare (Jun 18, 2012)

Just for the record, I cant even see pictures hosted on facebook.

Why ? Because I block everything from facebook. Scripts, cookies, anything. I simply dont see why I should allow such a company to track me.

Most sites still display their content fine, but facebook sulks and doesnt show its pictures.


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## Sw1tchFX (Jun 20, 2012)

If you're that worried about being tracked, than GTFO off the Internet and move into the woods.


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## prakhardeep (Jun 20, 2012)

Flickr is much better than Facebook.

Facebook is for text and links Flickr is for photos.

I also like 500px, try it out.


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## rexbobcat (Jun 20, 2012)

I tend to find that the regular FB quality versus the High Quality option tend to look better. Instead of being true high quality they just make the photo bigger so it's easier to see the artifacts lol.

I've found that sometimes Flickr compresses my color really badly, meaning that the actual photo on my hard drive is much less mute than the one on Flickr. It doesn't do it enough to make a huge difference, but sometimes it's noticeable.


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