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Question

Photos online suddenly low quality, help

by Dec 12, 2012 10:56PM PST

First off, I am an amateur photographer. I've uploaded thousands of pictures online, which are edited & sharp. Two days ago, when I view pictures online, not just mine, the dark areas of the photos are like a solid black mess. It looks like they were edited with a charcoal or pencil tool. They have no detail in the dark areas, and the lighter areas are 'blotchy' as well. Everything was fine until a couple days ago. I haven't added any programs or anything.

One thing that's strange is, if I look at a photo that I've uploaded, it's image quality is horrible, but if I open the same photo from a folder on my PC it looks fine, nice & crisp. Again, this just started, the online pics used to be crisp.

Thanks,

~Ace

Discussion is locked

7 Posts
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Answer
And If You Download Those Pics To Your Computer???
by Former Forum moderator Dec 12, 2012 11:25PM PST

...Are they crisp and sharp once again?... Depending on the site where you upload the photos, you may be looking at thumbnails of the pictures, which will be less that full quality... Many sites have had to change to thumnails because of the amount of server space required for extremely large file uploads.. Is that the case here?

Hope this helps.

Grif

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Photos
by Ace_and_Deuce Dec 13, 2012 12:05AM PST

Thanks for the reply!

Actually, I just tried it and it is sharp. The site is flickr, and they are full HQ images. I actually just saved one of my own pics and looking at them side by side shows a crazy difference in image quality. This was never like this before, and that's why I use flickr, because of the quality of the images after upload. ...and while I know facebook reduces quality on uploads, they are also way worse that they were two days ago. It's like something in a setting is making my online viewing horrible. 500px is the same way. It's frustrating because I upload pics that look nice & sharp, and I can't even enjoy looking at them online anymore.

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Photos
by Ace_and_Deuce Dec 13, 2012 12:07AM PST

I guess I should clarify my last post...

I saved one of my own images from the flickr site, then opened it up (offline) and compared it to the one on flickr. The saved one looks great, the one on flickr that I saved it from still looks bad.

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Re: picture quality
by Kees_B Former Forum moderator Dec 13, 2012 12:16AM PST

Since you have both the original file and the picture you uploaded and downloaded it's easy to compare details like filesize (at least 1 MB for a good picture) and resolution (a*b pixels, something like 3000*2000 for a good picture). Then you can see if these 2 versions are identical or that flickr changed the uploaded copy.

Then to be sure it's flickr and not your PC, download the same picture from flickr on another PC (friend, family, work) and look at that same attributes.

Kees

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Photos
by Ace_and_Deuce Dec 13, 2012 9:24AM PST

OK, the photos on flickr looked perfect on another computer and 2 smartphones, so what happened to my computer to cause this? ...and better yet, any clue on how to fix it?

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Maybe try reinstalling browser?
by Exploder2123 Dec 14, 2012 9:50PM PST

That might not be that case, but maybe you should try re-installing your browser, but don't forget to uninstall it first.

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Uninstall
by pgc3 Dec 15, 2012 10:49AM PST

The first thing to try would be to uninstall then reinstall the software that you have been using to see if it might be the issue. I saw that you are using Flickr, which is typically a pretty good thing to use. If the reinstall doesn't help, you might want to download Picasa and see how it reacts under the same circumstances. From what you have described I am leaning more toward software but it could be a hardware issue, first things first, I'd try uninstall reinstall. Good luck!!!!

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