Is this so unreasonable? Is it such a big thing to ask that as a pro user I should be able to display my photos the way I want them? I really don't think it is unreasonable.
depends - for $100 maybe it is? i don't know ...
one of the branches of this discussion a page or two back was, "would you be willing to pay more for the added flexibility of displaying and compressing your way, with you deciding how much, etc...
thanks for the valuable feedback and taking the time to tell us your thoughts and feelings on this subject!
one of the branches of this discussion a page or two back was, "would you be willing to pay more for the added flexibility of displaying and compressing your way, with you deciding how much, etc...
thanks for the valuable feedback and taking the time to tell us your thoughts and feelings on this subject!
one of the branches of this discussion a page or two back was, "would you be willing to pay more for the added flexibility of displaying and compressing your way, with you deciding how much, etc...
thanks for the valuable feedback and taking the time to tell us your thoughts and feelings on this subject!
As I said a few posts back, it probably wouldn't need to be that much more expensive (if more at all.) First of all, it seems that very few people care about the quality difference, so it would only be very few photographers who would ask for the greater quality. The total difference in bandwidth this change would cause would be negligible, if that were the case. Also, as someone said earlier, the compression is most visible with large areas of smooth color, which also tend to be more easily compressible. So if we set a fixed size and not a fixed compression rate on the pictures, that would improve the quality of the ones where the compression is most visible, and not use that more space.
I'm sure the smugmug people will come up with something good for this, as always
First of all, it seems that very few people care about the quality difference ............
<rant>
I don't think you can judge that by the number of people that have posted to this thread.
I think a majority of users of Smugmug use the site for sharing photos with their friends and for linking. I for one am now embarassed to to let my friends see my photos. They look so bad after up-loading to Smugmug. I payed for a service which has now been degraded.
I understand Andy's statement that the originals are un-compressed and that his buyers understand about compressed thumbnails and they can be sure that they will get good files. That does me no good however as I use the site for viewing only.
</rant>
<rant>
I don't think you can judge that by the number of people that have posted to this thread.
I think a majority of users of Smugmug use the site for sharing photos with their friends and for linking. I for one am now embarassed to to let my friends see my photos. They look so bad after up-loading to Smugmug. I payed for a service which has now been degraded.
I understand Andy's statement that the originals are un-compressed and that his buyers understand about compressed thumbnails and they can be sure that they will get good files. That does me no good however as I use the site for viewing only.
</rant>
you have some cool stuff on your site, behr. could you provide specific links to shots you think are showing compression issues?
thanks
The first shot is ok and was loaded some time ago. The second shot was loaded recently and does not look as good on smugmug as it does on my hard drive. There are a lot of artifacts that don't show when I view it at the same dimention on my hard drive.
The first shot is ok and was loaded some time ago. The second shot was loaded recently and does not look as good on smugmug as it does on my hard drive. There are a lot of artifacts that don't show when I view it at the same dimention on my hard drive.
Bear
could you point out where you see the artifacts on the 2nd shot - i'm not seeing them bear...
could you point out where you see the artifacts on the 2nd shot - i'm not seeing them bear...
Along the mountain ridge. Also not artifacts but over sharpening on the fishing poles.
Here is a shot that shows a lot of artifacts that do not appear ondrive when viewed at the same size. Notice just above his hat. The stick protruding from the water near the bottom left. The rock nearest the camera. Also around the trees. Notice the bush in the lower left seems over sharped.
which one was made by smugmug, and which was made by me, and finally, which one was made by me and also compressed by half?
(no cheating by looking at the file size!)
resized to 800x533 and compressed to <100kb by me in photoshop:
compressed by smugmug to 800x533
Good comparison. I have decided to cancel my account here. I am done with smugmug. Good publicity, not so good image quality, not even close standard.
Andy, I still cannot believe that you can accept image quality generated by smugmug. If the one you resized is not even over 100KB, why can't smugmug team look into details what they are doing wrong or not enough? Even under 100KB is an overkill for bandwidth? C'mon!
I am out of here. Thanks for all who contributed to this discussion. I think now everybody should have a good understanding of issue involved - poor compression.
Good comparison.
....
I think now everybody should have a good understanding of issue involved - poor compression.
Um, not to start a flame war or anything, but I think for Andy's sample images you definately missed the point. I don't see any compression artifacts in the smugmug file, I do see that it seems to be less sharpened than Andy's creations (correct me if I'm wrong Andy).
And why is it less sharpened???? Because after vehement posts by all the "Pros" on this forum that their images were being "destroyed" by smugmug's "oversharpening" the smugmug folks changed it. They made it very clear that except for a few pixel peepers they *never* get complaints about oversharpening - they get complaints about undersharp, but not over. Nonetheless, the fury was so loud they dialed back the USM settings.
And now after vehement complaints about compression it appears you fell for the oldest trick in the book - sharpening Can't please everyone I guess.
Now, before anyone jumps down my throat too quickly, I completely agree there are artifacts on many images as demonstrated by the examples in this thread, just not in Andy's example. And since I actually use a broadband connection and not morse code to interact with smugmug I'd really like to see larger files. That said, I also realize smugmug already has larger files than their competition in their target market and they do have to worry about a lot of 56K users.
If you're still around pengrus I'm curious where you're moving to with better compression. I wasn't able to find much except to do my own site. And if I did my own site there is no cheaper storage than smugmug so what I'd do is host all my own compressed thumbnails and originals on smugmug and then just have the HTML portion of the web page hosted on an independent server. Smugmug for cheap massive amounts of storage and a smaller but still probably more expensive server for a custom interface (there are things like Jalbum out there that can do it pretty easy). Just a thought if you can't find anything better out there - and you can make use of your remaining time in your smugmug subscription. No need to pay for anything but the cheapest level.
Good luck, and I hope you find something you like.
Um, not to start a flame war or anything, but I think for Andy's sample images you definately missed the point. I don't see any compression artifacts in the smugmug file, I do see that it seems to be less sharpened than Andy's creations (correct me if I'm wrong Andy).
And why is it less sharpened???? Because after vehement posts by all the "Pros" on this forum that their images were being "destroyed" by smugmug's "oversharpening" the smugmug folks changed it. They made it very clear that except for a few pixel peepers they *never* get complaints about oversharpening - they get complaints about undersharp, but not over. Nonetheless, the fury was so loud they dialed back the USM settings.
And now after vehement complaints about compression it appears you fell for the oldest trick in the book - sharpening Can't please everyone I guess.
Now, before anyone jumps down my throat too quickly, I completely agree there are artifacts on many images as demonstrated by the examples in this thread, just not in Andy's example. And since I actually use a broadband connection and not morse code to interact with smugmug I'd really like to see larger files. That said, I also realize smugmug already has larger files than their competition in their target market and they do have to worry about a lot of 56K users.
If you're still around pengrus I'm curious where you're moving to with better compression. I wasn't able to find much except to do my own site. And if I did my own site there is no cheaper storage than smugmug so what I'd do is host all my own compressed thumbnails and originals on smugmug and then just have the HTML portion of the web page hosted on an independent server. Smugmug for cheap massive amounts of storage and a smaller but still probably more expensive server for a custom interface (there are things like Jalbum out there that can do it pretty easy). Just a thought if you can't find anything better out there - and you can make use of your remaining time in your smugmug subscription. No need to pay for anything but the cheapest level.
Good luck, and I hope you find something you like.
Ken
yep - you're so right, ken. sharpening is such a personal taste thing. and we did go thru a period of sharpening adjustments.
in fact, my fs 1ds mark ii shot, i didn't sharpen it at all - i just uploaded it to smugmug, and let smug do the sharpening on the way down, to -L size. now, if i wanted it sharper, to match the middle one, i could have done that before uploading the full-res file.
Take a look at this. I don't know the details yet (I asked in the next message) but I wonder if this is due to pbase's compression scheme. If so I'd say that smugmug is at least on par or maybe better.
Y'all don't want to hear me, you just want to dance.
in fact, my fs 1ds mark ii shot, i didn't sharpen it at all - i just uploaded it to smugmug, and let smug do the sharpening on the way down, to -L size. now, if i wanted it sharper, to match the middle one, i could have done that before uploading the full-res file.
There are really two issues here. One, as a pro user (which I'm not currently), why should I be subjected to ANY amount of sharpening by Smugmug? This is the point I'm trying to make. I don't want my images altered in any way at all other than downsizing and a reasonable amount of compression (so long as they still look OK). Can't we have the option to bypass the Smugmug sharpening stuff? Let us sharpen our own pics as a Pro. I understand why you may want to sharpen consumer snapshots (even this is debatable), but not pro galleries.
Andy, to take your own words, "sharpening is such a personal taste thing". Yes, you're absolutely right. So let us do it ourselves (if we wish).
The second issue is that it's not sharpening that's the problem. It's the compression. True, a highly sharpened image will exagerate this. But it's still the compression itself.
There are really two issues here. One, as a pro user (which I'm not currently), why should I be subjected to ANY amount of sharpening by Smugmug? This is the point I'm trying to make. I don't want my images altered in any way at all other than downsizing and a reasonable amount of compression (so long as they still look OK). Can't we have the option to bypass the Smugmug sharpening stuff? Let us sharpen our own pics as a Pro. I understand why you may want to sharpen consumer snapshots (even this is debatable), but not pro galleries.
The second issue is that it's not sharpening that's the problem. It's the compression. True, a highly sharpened image will exagerate this. But it's still the compression itself.
both issues, selectable compression and sharpening, are under discussion - not sure what the outcome will be - but i can tell you that this is all valuable input for the smugmug engineers, thanks so much for your feedback.
There are really two issues here. One, as a pro user (which I'm not currently), why should I be subjected to ANY amount of sharpening by Smugmug? This is the point I'm trying to make. I don't want my images altered in any way at all other than downsizing and a reasonable amount of compression (so long as they still look OK). Can't we have the option to bypass the Smugmug sharpening stuff? Let us sharpen our own pics as a Pro. I understand why you may want to sharpen consumer snapshots (even this is debatable), but not pro galleries.
So, for the record, I'm in favor of smugmug offering us some preferences to control sharpening and compression level.
But, you asked why they would ever sharpen. First, they don't touch your original. It is not sharpened. If someone orders a print, the print is made directly from the unaltered original you uploaded. But, they do sharpen the size-reduced versions. The answer to why they do that is that when you compress a JPEG image, it loses apparent sharpness. Smugmug applies a fairly gentle amount of sharpening that is designed to try to maintain the same visible sharpness that the much larger original has. So, for the vast majority of non-PRO users (which is most of the world population), this is likely a desirable feature that makes their images on the web look a little better than they would have without it.
I'm not arguing that there aren't reasons for pro users to want to control this themselves. There are. And ultimately, the only way this thread will go away is when smugmug gives the pro users this control or if they slowly defect to other sites. I myself would like to dial in a little less JPEG compression at the cost of a little download speed, but I like the added sharpening.
So, for the record, I'm in favor of smugmug offering us some preferences to control sharpening and compression level.
Please also add me to that record. :D
Just thought I would say it is nice to hear you guys at Smugmug are discussing this. Regardless of the outcome, at least we know you do actually listen to your customers. Something that cannot be said for most other services.
Um, not to start a flame war or anything, but I think for Andy's sample images you definately missed the point. I don't see any compression artifacts in the smugmug file, I do see that it seems to be less sharpened than Andy's creations (correct me if I'm wrong Andy).
Ken
Ken, you are right and on Andy's image, it was more a sharpen issue. But overall quality - the combination of the issues leads to my decision. No, I have not found other sites that are well designed as smugmug with a good printing solution. I may go back to my own web site.
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BaldyRegistered Users, Super ModeratorsPosts: 2,853moderator
Yes, the post was on the effort to find a way to adaptively choose the compression level.
The images that cause problems are usually small byte-wise because they compress so well, because they have areas of nearly solid color. If we compress those less it probably won't cause the unwashed masses who think we're too slow to increase their flaming.
But if we just compress less across the board, the 90+% of images that look fine now because they're already big byte-wise are going to get bigger and the speed flamers will come down on us harder than they already do because our images are already bigger than all but one (unpopular) sharing site.
Along the mountain ridge. Also not artifacts but over sharpening on the fishing poles.
Here is a shot that shows a lot of artifacts that do not appear ondrive when viewed at the same size. Notice just above his hat. The stick protruding from the water near the bottom left. The rock nearest the camera. Also around the trees. Notice the bush in the lower left seems over sharped.
Bear
I don't like the artifacts in the trees, upper right.
I spent some time on this image to see what it would take. If I double the byte size and do no sharpening, I get this:
It's definitely cleaner but I can still see artifacts along the trees and skyline in the center, and I think we'd still hear about them, no? Unfortunately, it's now going to download in 23 seconds on a 56k modem... So I have to ask why doubling the size with its resulting penalities didn't clean it up more?
I think the answer is this image has some noise & artifacts in the original:
Here are the original pixels around the trees:
My conclusion from this image is in line with what we're thinking: for images like this that have broad areas of water or sky and already compress small (this one is 63k), we can afford to compress it less, to maybe 100k. That will clean it up some but no compression level is going to take one that already has artifacts and make it perfect.
My conclusion from this image is in line with what we're thinking: for images like this that have broad areas of water or sky and already compress small (this one is 63k), we can afford to compress it less, to maybe 100k. That will clean it up some but no compression level is going to take one that already has artifacts and make it perfect.
No?
Yes, you are correct in saying that no compression level will fix a photo that already has artifacts. Just to clarify, I hope you're not thinking that all the people who are complaining already have artifacts in their originals, because this is simply not the case. :
If you can afford to compress it less, I'm all for it. Any amount helps. By the way, the photo you increased byte-wise is a very significant improvement over the original compressed one.
If you're still around pengrus I'm curious where you're moving to with better compression. I wasn't able to find much except to do my own site.
ken
Have you tried Imageevent.com?
I had the same experience as pengrus and others vis-a-vis compression and artifacts at smugmug, and discussed it here on threads and by email with Baldy, who was very straighforward and clear with me. Nevertheless, the problem bothered me and so I cancelled my smugmug account before the trial period expired. In the end, I found that ImageEvent had better image quality (bigger thumbnails/lessorbettercompression), allows the viewers to order pictures to print, has plenty of options (including option for hierarchical organization, is easy to set up (for instance you can specify what the default image viewing size is) and is customizable in look (w/o having to fiddle with css), and is a better price. Now, smugmug does have great customer service and a very useful forum (as well as a great word-of-mouth across the web) but I consider the quality of the displayed pictures to be the most critical aspect of the service. Right now Imageevent.com does better than smugmug (or pbase for that matter). I'll keep an eye on any future updates of smugmug to check out if/when/ the compression artifact issues get addressed. Meanwhile, Imageevent does quite well for me.
Another Compression Example | Pros need a lower compression option
I started off with Smugmug (after some homerolled weblog/javascript popup solutions). I wasn't happy with how the images looked compressed and have been thinking about cancelling my account.
Basically I'm a candidate for pro or no.
I also think that there is whole lot too much Smugmug branding around (favicon, title bar, on page) - some of which is very detrimental to search results in google (if you're wondering why few find your images through the search engines, much of it is Smugmug's fault).
But to return to the images, here is the same image from:
My own gallery installation with ImageMagick set at 90
Evaluation - Photoshop version is head and shoulders above the others. I don't feel like going back to rolling every image by hand.
ImageMagick does a nice job at 90. Unfortunately gallery doesn't give one many versions (original + plus the size of your choice + thumbnail at size of your choice). If one uploads an original in a large size (say 1000 pixels and sets the downsized version at 600 pixels, one has viewers from 800 x 600 to 1600 x 1200 covered reasonably well). But no question of uploading originals.
After that Smugmug does quite a nice job but with some very nasty artificats around the nose and the face. But serviceable. If we with pro/power accounts could boost our compression levels for selected galleries, an 80 or 85 compression level should handle the issue. Apparently NetPBM does a better job of compression than ImageMagick but no doubt Smugmug have their reasons to prefer ImageMagick.
Finally, the PBase version is execrable. It is unuseable. It is not something one would want others to see. To get along with PBase one would have to upload images less than 800 pixels on the largest side to eliminate the PBase large size that many viewers choose by default.
The medium size versions are even worse, for both Smugmug and PBase.
If there was ever a call for lower automatic compression levels this is it!
I wouldn't want to post either of those images into a weblog or a forum. Granted the Smugmug medium sized image is head and shoulders above PBase.
Here is what Gallery with ImageMagick at 90 does with the thumbnail. Useable.
Clearly better than the Smugmug small
and Smugmug thumbnail:
Please don't tell me again about users with 56k modems! Those people are not out browsing photographs at this point. They will wait to get to an internet café if images are what they are after.
I don't think that professional image creators need to worry that the crowd in the bleacher is on a 386 with 640x480 monitor and 28k connection. This may be a bandwidth issue for Smugmug - but surely the intrinsic madness of uploading 10 MB originals and leaving them online is a larger bandwidth issue than decent looking thumbnails and medium sized photos.
The slowness issue seems to come more from code and server response times than from image size (I am on broadband and find an enormous lag when flipping between pages - although the images download quickly when they come).
I hope all of the above examples are of use to someone else.
I'm about ready to return to writing poetry. At least, there's a good chance that when published on the web your words will appear as you wrote them.
In fairness to Smugmug, they are trying very hard to do a good job in making our images appear good online and when printed. This thread is a good example of open communication on the issue. Hopefully this post will put to rest any idea that in terms of compression, the grass is greener elsewhere. I haven't tried a Flickr but I don't think compression is their strong suit judging by the impression that others' images have left me with.
To reiterate - pros need to be able to activate a lower compression (across all image sizes) for selected galleries. This should not be a global for the account as everyone has galleries that good is good enough.
I also think that there is whole lot too much Smugmug branding around (favicon, title bar, on page) - some of which is very detrimental to search results in google (if you're wondering why few find your images through the search engines, much of it is Smugmug's fault).
did you know you can change the favicon, title bar all of that? it's simple and easy and many have done it.
also, i would challenge your statement regarding it being "smugmug's fault" heheh - baldy and onethumb are incredibly adept at the google dance, and i can tell you that time and again i get phone calls, emails, from folks wanting images of mine that they found via google. if that's smugmug's fault, then i'm jazzed about that
as to your examples and other suggestions - thanks so much for taking the time to put them up here, and to say how you fell - it's incredibly important feedback and i'm certain that the engineers are going to look at it and take it to heart.
thanks again for contributing to this thread, dancephotos!
I don't like the artifacts in the trees, upper right.
I spent some time on this image to see what it would take. If I double the byte size and do no sharpening, I get this:
It's definitely cleaner but I can still see artifacts along the trees and skyline in the center, and I think we'd still hear about them, no? Unfortunately, it's now going to download in 23 seconds on a 56k modem... So I have to ask why doubling the size with its resulting penalities didn't clean it up more?
I think the answer is this image has some noise & artifacts in the original:
Here are the original pixels around the trees:
My conclusion from this image is in line with what we're thinking: for images like this that have broad areas of water or sky and already compress small (this one is 63k), we can afford to compress it less, to maybe 100k. That will clean it up some but no compression level is going to take one that already has artifacts and make it perfect.
No?
Sorry Baldy, I missed your response.
Yes your re-work does look better. Thanks for having a look at it. There are some artifacts in the original and it's a bit noisey too.
Just wondering how smugmug will be able to determine which photos could qualify for less compression.
Personally I think that there is no sharpness issue exactly, maybe just underexposure and a look of no good contrast. I rarely get correct exposure out of my 10D, always shooting raw and usually resorting to about 1 stop of exposure compensation in Capture One to make things look pleasing. Remember, skintones are supposed to be one stop above neutral for light skinned people to look natural.
As for compression, I know for a fact that clients would rather work fast and get the print at full quality than wait for the webhost to load a huge page. Its just a preview!
Thanks for your comments. I didn't know there was a way to get at the favicon. I've managed to clean up my own space otherwise at this point thanks to the CSS customisation options. Unfortunately the display:none tag leaves all this stuff on the page thus Google does see it all and it clutters its idea of what your page is about. When used to excess display:none can even get your site banned.
In terms of SEO for Google, the title tag is the most important one on the page. By hijacking it (and making it generic for all pages of your Smugmug site), Smugmug makes us the one-legged man in the race. Glad to hear you make it to the finish line sometimes Andy but you would do much, much better if they wouldn't. Due to database constraints, already URLs are a lost cause, but the title tag they can and should give back to users - at least at a pro level. What you want there is Gallery name/photo name.
To return to image quality - of the online galleries, Smugmug is the only one which provides good quality. Kudos where kudos are due. Nothing like Photoshop save for web with medium to high settings, but much better than anyone else (out of curiousity I tested Flickr's compression today and they do surprisingly well on the large size but fall to pieces on the medium and small sizes)
Bear - In terms of how to decide which pictures get it and which don't it's very simple. The photographer needs to set it himself on a per gallery basis. He should be able to set it after seeing versions that he is not happy with. It could be a customisable number (but that might lead to a lot of playing around, overwhelming the servers - bad) or just a significantly higher preset - like 90 for instance which is the default for Menalto Gallery out of the box.
Nick - Of course I would like my images to download as fast as possible like anyone else, so I would leave my default setting at normal and only use the lower compression setting for galleries which have pictures which show artifacting in key areas (face, eyes, mouth), like this particular one.
I disagree with you on the preview comment. Depending on the photographer, the presentation of the image at Smugmug is no preview. People are coming and enjoying your work, perhaps to return and buy years later (after many visits). In many cases, it is like a permanent ongoing exhibition.
Thanks to Behr for the river example above. It prompted me to do my own detailed comparison testing. The artifacting around the man's head (center of the photograph!) in the more compressed version would be totally unacceptable to me. The second version is much better as at least the artificating does not catch one's eye immediately.
Comments
depends - for $100 maybe it is? i don't know ...
one of the branches of this discussion a page or two back was, "would you be willing to pay more for the added flexibility of displaying and compressing your way, with you deciding how much, etc...
thanks for the valuable feedback and taking the time to tell us your thoughts and feelings on this subject!
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As I said a few posts back, it probably wouldn't need to be that much more expensive (if more at all.) First of all, it seems that very few people care about the quality difference, so it would only be very few photographers who would ask for the greater quality. The total difference in bandwidth this change would cause would be negligible, if that were the case. Also, as someone said earlier, the compression is most visible with large areas of smooth color, which also tend to be more easily compressible. So if we set a fixed size and not a fixed compression rate on the pictures, that would improve the quality of the ones where the compression is most visible, and not use that more space.
I'm sure the smugmug people will come up with something good for this, as always
I don't think you can judge that by the number of people that have posted to this thread.
I think a majority of users of Smugmug use the site for sharing photos with their friends and for linking. I for one am now embarassed to to let my friends see my photos. They look so bad after up-loading to Smugmug. I payed for a service which has now been degraded.
I understand Andy's statement that the originals are un-compressed and that his buyers understand about compressed thumbnails and they can be sure that they will get good files. That does me no good however as I use the site for viewing only.
</rant>
Bear
http://behr655.smugmug.com/gallery/2514206#132038106
could we see your site (linky) and some examples?
thanks. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ear.gif" border="0" alt="" >
EDIT: I found your site, behr655.smugmug.com
are you embarrased about this shot???
surely you're not embarrased about this one?
you have some cool stuff on your site, behr. could you provide specific links to shots you think are showing compression issues?
thanks
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Bear
http://behr655.smugmug.com/gallery/2514206#132038106
could you point out where you see the artifacts on the 2nd shot - i'm not seeing them bear...
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Here is a shot that shows a lot of artifacts that do not appear ondrive when viewed at the same size. Notice just above his hat. The stick protruding from the water near the bottom left. The rock nearest the camera. Also around the trees. Notice the bush in the lower left seems over sharped.
Bear
http://behr655.smugmug.com/gallery/2514206#132038106
Andy, I still cannot believe that you can accept image quality generated by smugmug. If the one you resized is not even over 100KB, why can't smugmug team look into details what they are doing wrong or not enough? Even under 100KB is an overkill for bandwidth? C'mon!
I am out of here. Thanks for all who contributed to this discussion. I think now everybody should have a good understanding of issue involved - poor compression.
too bad - did you notice that smugmug said they're looking into it even further?
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And why is it less sharpened???? Because after vehement posts by all the "Pros" on this forum that their images were being "destroyed" by smugmug's "oversharpening" the smugmug folks changed it. They made it very clear that except for a few pixel peepers they *never* get complaints about oversharpening - they get complaints about undersharp, but not over. Nonetheless, the fury was so loud they dialed back the USM settings.
And now after vehement complaints about compression it appears you fell for the oldest trick in the book - sharpening
Now, before anyone jumps down my throat too quickly, I completely agree there are artifacts on many images as demonstrated by the examples in this thread, just not in Andy's example. And since I actually use a broadband connection and not morse code to interact with smugmug I'd really like to see larger files. That said, I also realize smugmug already has larger files than their competition in their target market and they do have to worry about a lot of 56K users.
If you're still around pengrus I'm curious where you're moving to with better compression. I wasn't able to find much except to do my own site. And if I did my own site there is no cheaper storage than smugmug so what I'd do is host all my own compressed thumbnails and originals on smugmug and then just have the HTML portion of the web page hosted on an independent server. Smugmug for cheap massive amounts of storage and a smaller but still probably more expensive server for a custom interface (there are things like Jalbum out there that can do it pretty easy). Just a thought if you can't find anything better out there - and you can make use of your remaining time in your smugmug subscription. No need to pay for anything but the cheapest level.
Good luck, and I hope you find something you like.
Ken
yep - you're so right, ken. sharpening is such a personal taste thing. and we did go thru a period of sharpening adjustments.
in fact, my fs 1ds mark ii shot, i didn't sharpen it at all - i just uploaded it to smugmug, and let smug do the sharpening on the way down, to -L size. now, if i wanted it sharper, to match the middle one, i could have done that before uploading the full-res file.
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http://photos.mikelanestudios.com/
Andy, to take your own words, "sharpening is such a personal taste thing". Yes, you're absolutely right. So let us do it ourselves (if we wish).
The second issue is that it's not sharpening that's the problem. It's the compression. True, a highly sharpened image will exagerate this. But it's still the compression itself.
both issues, selectable compression and sharpening, are under discussion - not sure what the outcome will be - but i can tell you that this is all valuable input for the smugmug engineers, thanks so much for your feedback.
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So, for the record, I'm in favor of smugmug offering us some preferences to control sharpening and compression level.
But, you asked why they would ever sharpen. First, they don't touch your original. It is not sharpened. If someone orders a print, the print is made directly from the unaltered original you uploaded. But, they do sharpen the size-reduced versions. The answer to why they do that is that when you compress a JPEG image, it loses apparent sharpness. Smugmug applies a fairly gentle amount of sharpening that is designed to try to maintain the same visible sharpness that the much larger original has. So, for the vast majority of non-PRO users (which is most of the world population), this is likely a desirable feature that makes their images on the web look a little better than they would have without it.
I'm not arguing that there aren't reasons for pro users to want to control this themselves. There are. And ultimately, the only way this thread will go away is when smugmug gives the pro users this control or if they slowly defect to other sites. I myself would like to dial in a little less JPEG compression at the cost of a little download speed, but I like the added sharpening.
--John
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Just thought I would say it is nice to hear you guys at Smugmug are discussing this. Regardless of the outcome, at least we know you do actually listen to your customers. Something that cannot be said for most other services.
My hats off to you.
The images that cause problems are usually small byte-wise because they compress so well, because they have areas of nearly solid color. If we compress those less it probably won't cause the unwashed masses who think we're too slow to increase their flaming.
But if we just compress less across the board, the 90+% of images that look fine now because they're already big byte-wise are going to get bigger and the speed flamers will come down on us harder than they already do because our images are already bigger than all but one (unpopular) sharing site.
I spent some time on this image to see what it would take. If I double the byte size and do no sharpening, I get this:
It's definitely cleaner but I can still see artifacts along the trees and skyline in the center, and I think we'd still hear about them, no? Unfortunately, it's now going to download in 23 seconds on a 56k modem... So I have to ask why doubling the size with its resulting penalities didn't clean it up more?
I think the answer is this image has some noise & artifacts in the original:
Here are the original pixels around the trees:
My conclusion from this image is in line with what we're thinking: for images like this that have broad areas of water or sky and already compress small (this one is 63k), we can afford to compress it less, to maybe 100k. That will clean it up some but no compression level is going to take one that already has artifacts and make it perfect.
No?
If you can afford to compress it less, I'm all for it. Any amount helps. By the way, the photo you increased byte-wise is a very significant improvement over the original compressed one.
I had the same experience as pengrus and others vis-a-vis compression and artifacts at smugmug, and discussed it here on threads and by email with Baldy, who was very straighforward and clear with me. Nevertheless, the problem bothered me and so I cancelled my smugmug account before the trial period expired. In the end, I found that ImageEvent had better image quality (bigger thumbnails/lessorbettercompression), allows the viewers to order pictures to print, has plenty of options (including option for hierarchical organization, is easy to set up (for instance you can specify what the default image viewing size is) and is customizable in look (w/o having to fiddle with css), and is a better price. Now, smugmug does have great customer service and a very useful forum (as well as a great word-of-mouth across the web) but I consider the quality of the displayed pictures to be the most critical aspect of the service. Right now Imageevent.com does better than smugmug (or pbase for that matter). I'll keep an eye on any future updates of smugmug to check out if/when/ the compression artifact issues get addressed. Meanwhile, Imageevent does quite well for me.
-Alex
I've just highlighted that bit as I couldn't comment on the rest, but imageevent.com is $24.95 p.a., for a maximum of 1500 images (1500Mb estimate).
Even though smugmug Standard is $5 more a year, it has unlimited storage
smugmug gallery
I started off with Smugmug (after some homerolled weblog/javascript popup solutions). I wasn't happy with how the images looked compressed and have been thinking about cancelling my account.
Basically I'm a candidate for pro or no.
I also think that there is whole lot too much Smugmug branding around (favicon, title bar, on page) - some of which is very detrimental to search results in google (if you're wondering why few find your images through the search engines, much of it is Smugmug's fault).
But to return to the images, here is the same image from:
Smugmug
http://www.smugmug.com/photos/32859916-L-2.jpghttp://www.smugmug.com/photos/32859916-L-2.jpg
PBase
uncoy/tomtomorrow/pbaseIMGP2608highcontrast.jpg
Photoshop compression:
http://www.decadencefilms.com/gallery/albums/Chris-Haring-Liquid-Loft/stephanie_cumming_beauty.jpg
My own gallery installation with ImageMagick set at 90
Evaluation - Photoshop version is head and shoulders above the others. I don't feel like going back to rolling every image by hand.
ImageMagick does a nice job at 90. Unfortunately gallery doesn't give one many versions (original + plus the size of your choice + thumbnail at size of your choice). If one uploads an original in a large size (say 1000 pixels and sets the downsized version at 600 pixels, one has viewers from 800 x 600 to 1600 x 1200 covered reasonably well). But no question of uploading originals.
After that Smugmug does quite a nice job but with some very nasty artificats around the nose and the face. But serviceable. If we with pro/power accounts could boost our compression levels for selected galleries, an 80 or 85 compression level should handle the issue. Apparently NetPBM does a better job of compression than ImageMagick but no doubt Smugmug have their reasons to prefer ImageMagick.
Finally, the PBase version is execrable. It is unuseable. It is not something one would want others to see. To get along with PBase one would have to upload images less than 800 pixels on the largest side to eliminate the PBase large size that many viewers choose by default.
The medium size versions are even worse, for both Smugmug and PBase.
http://www.smugmug.com/photos/32859916-M-2.jpg
PBase
If there was ever a call for lower automatic compression levels this is it!
I wouldn't want to post either of those images into a weblog or a forum. Granted the Smugmug medium sized image is head and shoulders above PBase.
Here is what Gallery with ImageMagick at 90 does with the thumbnail. Useable.
Clearly better than the Smugmug small
and Smugmug thumbnail:
Please don't tell me again about users with 56k modems! Those people are not out browsing photographs at this point. They will wait to get to an internet café if images are what they are after.
I don't think that professional image creators need to worry that the crowd in the bleacher is on a 386 with 640x480 monitor and 28k connection. This may be a bandwidth issue for Smugmug - but surely the intrinsic madness of uploading 10 MB originals and leaving them online is a larger bandwidth issue than decent looking thumbnails and medium sized photos.
The slowness issue seems to come more from code and server response times than from image size (I am on broadband and find an enormous lag when flipping between pages - although the images download quickly when they come).
I hope all of the above examples are of use to someone else.
I'm about ready to return to writing poetry. At least, there's a good chance that when published on the web your words will appear as you wrote them.
In fairness to Smugmug, they are trying very hard to do a good job in making our images appear good online and when printed. This thread is a good example of open communication on the issue. Hopefully this post will put to rest any idea that in terms of compression, the grass is greener elsewhere. I haven't tried a Flickr but I don't think compression is their strong suit judging by the impression that others' images have left me with.
To reiterate - pros need to be able to activate a lower compression (across all image sizes) for selected galleries. This should not be a global for the account as everyone has galleries that good is good enough.
did you know you can change the favicon, title bar all of that?
also, i would challenge your statement regarding it being "smugmug's fault" heheh - baldy and onethumb are incredibly adept at the google dance, and i can tell you that time and again i get phone calls, emails, from folks wanting images of mine that they found via google. if that's smugmug's fault, then i'm jazzed about that
as to your examples and other suggestions - thanks so much for taking the time to put them up here, and to say how you fell - it's incredibly important feedback and i'm certain that the engineers are going to look at it and take it to heart.
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Yes your re-work does look better. Thanks for having a look at it. There are some artifacts in the original and it's a bit noisey too.
Just wondering how smugmug will be able to determine which photos could qualify for less compression.
Bear
http://behr655.smugmug.com/gallery/2514206#132038106
As for compression, I know for a fact that clients would rather work fast and get the print at full quality than wait for the webhost to load a huge page. Its just a preview!
-Nick
Thanks for your comments. I didn't know there was a way to get at the favicon. I've managed to clean up my own space otherwise at this point thanks to the CSS customisation options. Unfortunately the display:none tag leaves all this stuff on the page thus Google does see it all and it clutters its idea of what your page is about. When used to excess display:none can even get your site banned.
In terms of SEO for Google, the title tag is the most important one on the page. By hijacking it (and making it generic for all pages of your Smugmug site), Smugmug makes us the one-legged man in the race. Glad to hear you make it to the finish line sometimes Andy but you would do much, much better if they wouldn't. Due to database constraints, already URLs are a lost cause, but the title tag they can and should give back to users - at least at a pro level. What you want there is Gallery name/photo name.
To return to image quality - of the online galleries, Smugmug is the only one which provides good quality. Kudos where kudos are due. Nothing like Photoshop save for web with medium to high settings, but much better than anyone else (out of curiousity I tested Flickr's compression today and they do surprisingly well on the large size but fall to pieces on the medium and small sizes)
Bear - In terms of how to decide which pictures get it and which don't it's very simple. The photographer needs to set it himself on a per gallery basis. He should be able to set it after seeing versions that he is not happy with. It could be a customisable number (but that might lead to a lot of playing around, overwhelming the servers - bad) or just a significantly higher preset - like 90 for instance which is the default for Menalto Gallery out of the box.
Nick - Of course I would like my images to download as fast as possible like anyone else, so I would leave my default setting at normal and only use the lower compression setting for galleries which have pictures which show artifacting in key areas (face, eyes, mouth), like this particular one.
I disagree with you on the preview comment. Depending on the photographer, the presentation of the image at Smugmug is no preview. People are coming and enjoying your work, perhaps to return and buy years later (after many visits). In many cases, it is like a permanent ongoing exhibition.
Thanks to Behr for the river example above. It prompted me to do my own detailed comparison testing. The artifacting around the man's head (center of the photograph!) in the more compressed version would be totally unacceptable to me. The second version is much better as at least the artificating does not catch one's eye immediately.
Cheers to all.