Lately my uploads seem to be, well "dull"

bohdank

I'm not sure if I changed anything in my workflow but, lately, my uploaded images seem to have a lot of artifacts and are, clearly, not sharp and lack detail.

Source images are from a 5DII, razor sharp on my monitor... I use Photoshop, default sharpening in ACR, transfer to Photoshop, downsize to 800 on the long side and upload. My galleries have sharpening turned off.

I use Bicubic sharper. JPG's saves with Quality = 10

I've tried adding some sharpening but it seems to make it worse.

I'm at a loss and my image IQ sucks right now, on Smugmug.

Help.... what is your workflow ?

www.bwkphotography.com

jfriend

Turning sharpening off is not a good idea. That sharpening is NOT applied to the image you upload. It's applied to the smaller versions of images that are created from your original. One always wants to apply some sharpening after reducing the number of pixels to make a smaller version of the image. Without that sharpening, the reduced size images will look soft.

If you want more help, you will need to provide a link to a specific image that you think has "a lot of artifacts and are, clearly, not sharp and lack detail." Make sure that access to originals is provided so we can see exactly what you uploaded.

bohdank

Maybe that is it... turning sharpening off.

here are a couple that I am not happy with

http://www.bwkphotography.com/People/Other/IMG5931/854714264_aaGAK-XL.jpg

http://www.bwkphotography.com/Places/Montreal-1/BotanicalGardens2/861162043_UzXEY-XL-1.jpg

bohdank

To revive an old thread, I'm a lot more happier with the results the last month or so. Still, I have a Flickr site which I keep in parallel to my Smugmug sie, with the same images. They look considerably better on Flickr, so I don't know what Flickr and Smugmug are doing differently.

Andy

bohdank wrote: »

To revive an old thread, I'm a lot more happier with the results the last month or so. Still, I have a Flickr site which I keep in parallel to my Smugmug sie, with the same images. They look considerably better on Flickr, so I don't know what Flickr and Smugmug are doing differently.

How do you process your images? What software, and what general steps, and what color space? What is your editing setup?

bohdank

I have a color calibrated monitor. I use ACR/CS5. Color space of uploaded images is sRGB

In a nutshell....General steps in ACR... set profile to Nuetral, adjust exposure, color balance, export to CS5.... crop, maybe run it through Nik Color Efex... downsize to final size (700 largest dimension). Add sharpening, add watermark, save as JPG, quality 10, upload to Smugmug and Flickr.

WinsomeWorks

bohdank wrote: »

I'm not sure if I changed anything in my workflow but, lately, my uploaded images seem to have a lot of artifacts and are, clearly, not sharp and lack detail.

Source images are from a 5DII, razor sharp on my monitor... I use Photoshop, default sharpening in ACR, transfer to Photoshop, downsize to 800 on the long side and upload. My galleries have sharpening turned off.

I use Bicubic sharper. JPG's saves with Quality = 10

I've tried adding some sharpening but it seems to make it worse.

I'm at a loss and my image IQ sucks right now, on Smugmug.

Help.... what is your workflow ?

www.bwkphotography.com

First off, I'd have to wonder why you don't save to the highest quality jpeg. (although I don't know why that alone would make them look any worse on one site than another). Seeing the photos though, I would figure right away that they're not highest quality saves. Bicubic is fine on some photos, but not all. Make sure you're not doing any color/lighting/effects/exposure tinkering after sharpening. Also, I would rarely (except with the SmugMug gallery settings for viewing) be sharpening an entire photo, unless there's some overall pattern or geometric design, etc. that needs it. Sharpening areas only (eyes, a focal point area, etc.) tends to screw up your photo a lot less. Also, why do you want to downsize them so much, since you can just have SmugMug display certain sizes... I guess you have a reason, but I can't fathom what it would be.

jfriend

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

First off, I'd have to wonder why you don't save to the highest quality jpeg. (although I don't know why that alone would make them look any worse on one site than another).

JPEG quality level 10 (on the 1-12 scale) is more than enough for gigantic prints and even overkill for web display. So, they don't need higher jpeg quality - you won't be able to see the difference and will just be stuck with larger files.

Perhaps there is something going on in the downsizing though. If I were them, I'd upload a full-size image to Smugmug and compare the Smugmug-generated web version to what they uploaded. This would isolate whether the issue is in your own downsizing or not.

WinsomeWorks

quality stuff
I don't know... to me the 2 examples just don't look to me like highest quality saves, & if it were me, I wouldn't want them to look that way if they could easily look better. Maybe quality isn't the main reason, but I do think I would see a difference if he'd upload the same photos at quality 12. (I mean, there are enough other reasons for a photo to look better or worse online, & if this is your main place to display them, why hamper yourself w/ lower quality to begin with?) The other reason is that he says they're already only 800 pixels max per side. That's already making a small file. Due to that, the viewing size in the galleries is already quite a lot smaller than it could be... I'm guessing due to privacy concerns. But watermarks & right-click protection is on anyway (both of which are good).... to each his own, but to me it's disappointing to arrive in a gallery & have such small photos. I do see they're not for sale though. 800 pixels across would be a problem for making really large photos, even if quality 10 wouldn't. (With some companies, that too would be a problem.... I know from trying! MyPhotoPipe, which is what iStockphoto uses, would be an example)

There could be something else weird going on. I looked at "The Wife" gallery, and some thumbs just wouldn't show up.... other galleries too. Oddly though, the photo previews fine if you click on the blank thumb. Also, when you hover over each thumb, they move. Maybe that's a customization? I know mine don't do that. I'm stumped. But the photos in galleries don't appear "dull" to me... in fact, they mostly look really great... just small. But I'd have to see the comparison between the "other" site, etc.

The quality thing can be pretty subjective, but there are certainly tests you can do to figure out what's what. As an example of the audio counterpart, youngsters these days who've grown up on mP3s don't think there's any quality loss from CDs... they often can't even hear it. To me it's obvious, as are analog-digital differences (& I do not mean the latter is always "better"!) But I grew up on 33s & reel-to-reel and later CDs & have also spent countless days in recording studios-- so if I didn't notice any difference in the quality of these various audio files, I'd say something is really wrong. I feel a lot the same way about visual files, & I know it's not all in my head. Some actual comparisons would really help here though.

jfriend

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

I don't know... to me the 2 examples just don't look to me like highest quality saves, & if it were me, I wouldn't want them to look that way if they could easily look better. Maybe quality isn't the main reason, but I do think I would see a difference if he'd upload the same photos at quality 12. (I mean, there are enough other reasons for a photo to look better or worse online, & if this is your main place to display them, why hamper yourself w/ lower quality to begin with?) The other reason is that he says they're already only 800 pixels max per side. That's already making a small file. Due to that, the viewing size in the galleries is already quite a lot smaller than it could be... I'm guessing due to privacy concerns. But watermarks & right-click protection is on anyway (both of which are good).... to each his own, but to me it's disappointing to arrive in a gallery & have such small photos. I do see they're not for sale though. 800 pixels across would be a problem for making really large photos, even if quality 10 wouldn't. (With some companies, that too would be a problem.... I know from trying! MyPhotoPipe, which is what iStockphoto uses, would be an example)

There could be something else weird going on. I looked at "The Wife" gallery, and some thumbs just wouldn't show up.... other galleries too. Oddly though, the photo previews fine if you click on the blank thumb. Also, when you hover over each thumb, they move. Maybe that's a customization? I know mine don't do that. I'm stumped. But the photos in galleries don't appear "dull" to me... in fact, they mostly look really great... just small. But I'd have to see the comparison between the "other" site, etc.

I rather doubt we're seeing a difference between quality 10 and 12. I suspect any quality issues have to do with the downsizing process, not the compression level. My suggestion was to upload a full size image and let Smugmug's process downsize it automatically and then compare the two (Smugmug's auto downsizing process vs. the manual downsize process) and see which looks better.

bohdank

Thanks to both of you for taking the time to help out...

I don't have a Pro account so I can't really limit the maximum size to any effective limit which is why I upload images as small as I do. They're really not stealable at that size.

I have made some changes since the original post in May and I am happy with the results I have been getting lately. The newer images that you may have looked at reflect the improved IQ. Still, they generally look better on Flickr when I view original size here and on Flickr. Almost as if there are JPG artifacts. I do modest sharpening but have bumped it up slightly recently and the images do look better.

There is no customization on the Gallry pages so I don't know what is going on with the moving thumbnails or images that don't show. This seems to be a Smugmug problem, at times. Problems now... an hour later everything is fine.

I shoot a lot of concerts and do not have any real time to process images to any degree before uploading. I do go back sometimes and re edit some of them. The last group of photos was for 22 concerts shot over 3 days days. I do sharpening as the very last step before saving and uploading.