Export to Facebook - photo quality

SmugSam

Hi,

Apologies if this has been covered before - but I can't find it! (And this may not technically be a SM Support topic, but potentially it is!)

Does anyone out there have any tips/tricks on posting/linking photos from SM to FB with reasonable quality? I would like to post a photo from my SM site every now and then to FB to keep people interested in my site, but whenever I do the resulting quality is not great, and not really representative of the photo in question. I know FB does its own compression, and that is probably what I am fighting against, but maybe others have had better success than me.

There are three options I have tried:

1.) Using the built-in share functionality (that posts a link to the photo, and a thumbnail of said photo). This results in a not-great thumbnail in the news feed in FB. Unfortunate, as this would be the easiest way, and the cleanest link to the SM site. The poor quality is also why I have disabled allowing visitors to 'Share' photos from my site to social networks.

2.) Exporting directly from Lightroom using their Facebook publisher. Also not very good results.

3.) Exporting directly from Lightroom/Photoshop first, in a range of sizes (trying to match those in use by FB e.g. 806px on longest side) and a variety of formats (JPG, PNG), and then manually entering a link to my SM site in the text. But again the quality of the posted photo is disappointing.

Perhaps there are differences between a personal site and a FB 'Page' in terms of the amount of compression that FB carries out on uploaded photos? Or perhaps there is something I am not doing?

Any thoughts/suggestions gratefully accepted!

cheers,

rainforest1155

Hi Sam,
In my opinion, only Facebook themselves could give you a definitive answer on that. Since this is likely not something they talk about, you could only experiment for yourself to see what way works best for you.

Maybe someone else is an expert on posting photos on Facebook and could chime in on the matter.

My guess is, that there's nothing you can do to tweak the quality and you can only hope that at some point in the future, Facebook increases the quality they use for photos.

Sebastian

SmugSam

Thanks Sebastian. I have seen some others who seem to have had better results with their photo posting to FB, hence the question here. It is frustrating if you want to 'showcase' your work via this channel, but if it is in FB's hands, I guess it is just a matter of accepting that and moving on.

SmugSam

I stumbled into something that has answered my own question - and that answer is within Smugmug itself!

There is a 'Publish' button in the Organizer, which I had previously assumed was just the same as the option I outlined in Number 1 in my opening post here. But it is VERY different. You can choose a target FB album, choose image size, add some text in front of the link etc etc. But, most important of all, the resulting quality (both of the version posted in the timeline, plus also the full version if the image is clicked on) is great. I imagine coupling this with an album in FB set to High Quality to give best results. Can't believe the time I have spent trying to make this work from Lightroom, PS, etc. and the answer was there the whole time.

Turns out there is even a help page explaining all this: http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/256170-can-i-publish-a-gallery-to-my-facebook-page-

In case this helps anyone else out there.

Sam

leftquark

SmugSam wrote: »

I stumbled into something that has answered my own question - and that answer is within Smugmug itself!

clapbow:ivar

SmugSam

leftquark wrote: »

clapbow:ivar

Haha - yes I know, Aaron, I know. In my defense, however, it is not immediately obvious (nor naturally intuitive IMO) that there are two different ways of sharing to FB that are done very differently and with such different results, and using a button that has the same icon!!

agallia

SmugSam wrote: »

I stumbled into something that has answered my own question - and that answer is within Smugmug itself!

There is a 'Publish' button in the Organizer, ...

What a great bit of info! Thanks.