Digital imaging articles:
Let's cut Facebook some slack!
Our expectations are too high ...
Everybody's complaining
It seems that everywhere I turn I see photographers complaining about the quality of their images when posted to Facebook.
I want to help, and put things into perspective.
Complaint: Fuzzy/blurry/soft images
Many photographers have noticed that their images lose sharpness when posted on Facebook.
Why does this happen?
Because the uploaded images are too big for the space that Facebook allows. So Facebook automatically resizes them, and recompresses them.
Why does Facebook do this?
If you stop for a moment to think about it, you'll realise the answer. How many images are being uploaded to Facebook, every minute of every day? Thousands? Millions?
Even at reduced sizes, the storage capacity required for all those images must be mind-boggling. Imagine if Facebook were hosting larger, even full-resolution, versions of all those photos? The burden of storage would be unimaginable.
So, like I say, let's cut Facebook some slack. They need to reduce large image sizes. End of story.
Why is it worse on Facebook than elsewhere?
Well, for two reasons. Firstly, it simply seems that Facebook's resizing method isn't very good. Presumably, they've opted for a fast process, rather than a top-quality one. Again, who can blame them?
Secondly, Facebook's Jpeg compression settings are fairly strong. If you closely compare a before-uploading image with an after-uploading image, you'll see some Jpeg degradation.
Solution: Avoiding the fuzzy images
The solution is remarkably easy.
The "window" that Facebook provides for images is 720 pixels square. Anything larger is resized to fit in that space.
So, when you're preparing images for Facebook, resize them to 720px on the longest side. (File > Automate > Fit Image is the handiest way to do this in Photoshop).
Then sharpen using your favoured web-sharpening method, and save your Jpeg at a decent quality level.
By taking these steps, you ensure minimum damage by Facebook's resizing and compression settings.
Additional notes
When I first wrote this article, I included "Complaint 2: The colour is wrong!". The reason was that Facebook was stripping the ICC profile out of images. I'm very pleased to say this is no longer the case.
The Facebook engine now automatically converts images to sRGB, and keeps the profile intact. If you stop and listen for a moment, you can hear sighs of relief from photographers all over the world!
(Strangely, they don't use the standard sRGB, they've gone for a newer - and not widely embraced - "black scaled" version. I'm not sure why.)