Poor quality after uploading images

[msphotogeek]

I have a quick question i'm hoping I can get some advice or direction on. I've been doing photography for almost 12 years now, and up until last year i was shooting on a pro film body. I now have my first digital SLR and it's working out pretty well so far. However i'm running into an issue with my post production on my photos. When i upload them onto my computer they look great. Very little post production attention is needed. When I view my images on my computers at home they look great, whether it's my lap top or desktop computer. However when i view my images on a different computer they look horrible. Not only that, but when I upload my images to a website whether it's for a contest or just for show, they look so much more different then what the original print looks like.

I usually have my pix at around 300 to 600 DPI when i save them to my hard drive once they have been uploaded to my computer. For the most part they look great on my screen, but as soon as they are uploaded to a site, they lose their sharpness and become very grainy any noisy. Up until now, i've always had my pictures printed out and then scanned to get them on file to be uploaded to a computer, with no troubles. Now all of a sudden i'm seeing a big difference in photo quality once they are uploaded to some place.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[bob_r]

Welcome to the forum! Where in MS are you (PM me if for some reason you don't want that public).

Whenever you upload your photos to a site, you're at the mercy of the site's parameters. Many sites restrict image file sizes and reduce them to their standards.
To avoid this, many of us post our images on other sites that don't restrict the file sizes and then link to the photo. Some of these sites charge for storing your photos, but they don't charge very much.
I use http://www.pbase.com and pay $23 a year for 600MB of storage. If you're planning on selling your images, some of the other sites would be a better option. I think a number of the members here use smugmug.

[Mitchell]

A few things to think about are, like bob said, where ever you are uploading your images to, do they automatically resize your images to a lower resolution? This would be the main reason that they dont look sharp. Also another things is, What PPI, (Pixel's Per Inch) are you saving your images with? The DPI does not matter, unless you are printing them, DPI ( dots per Inch) really depends on what your printer can do. As far as noise and grain, that should not change when uploading or resizing.

What format are you saving these images that you upload as?
A few times i forgot to save as Jpeg when uploading the the web and the color profile of the TIFF does not show correctly, Making it look quite a bit different, as far as colors go.

Hope this helps..

[msphotogeek]

Thank you for your responses.....the "ms" in my name is for my intials....i actually in VA. So after reading your responses, i'm leaning toward that fact that maybe my photos are not set up the way they should be for uploading images to a website. All my images are saved as a .jpeg, and I will usually reduce the image size in photoshop to be roughly a 4x6 in size and at 300 or 600 in resolution (pixel/inch), bringing the file size to about 1meg or higher on most images. would this higher resolution be the issue? Should my images be in ball park of 72ppi -150ppi with the total image size being around 500k or less?

My normal protocol for when i've uploaded my images from my camera to my computer, is to take the images I want printed and bring them into photoshop and reduce the picture size to a 4x6, as this is what my print sizes are in my portfolio. I usually set the res at 300 or 600 and just leave the rest as is. I don't seem to have the "bad image quality" when i upload my images to say "facebook" or sending them via email, however the other day when i uploaded two of my images outta the 5 that i wanted to submit for the 3rd annual favorite places contest; after uploaded the images they looked horrible on screen. Nothing like the actual digital file or print.

[bob_r]

If you have Photoshop, when you save an image, go to Image->Image size and set the larger pixel dimension to 800 and let PS set the other one. Then save at quality 7 and you shouldn't have trouble uploading to most sites.
You could also go to File->Save for Web and Devices and this should also work.

[Mitchell]

you said that you resize them as a 4X6 for printing and uploading.. Why do that for printing, when you could have the highest resolution available?

[bosphoto]

To avoid this, many of us post our images on other sites that don't restrict the file sizes and then link to the photo. Some of these sites charge for storing your photos, but they don't charge very much.
I use http://www.pbase.com and pay $23 a year for 600MB of storage. If you're planning on selling your images, some of the other sites would be a better option. I think a number of the members here use smugmug.

Bob_r is correct about that, you may be better off posting to a site where you can upload your full resolution images. These sites will also restict what size your visitors can download as well, so you don't have to share your hihg-res pictures if you don't want to. Pbase is one of the cheapest around and has some nice features. SmugMug or Zenfolio are both great if you want to sell your images, check out a SmugMug and Zenfolio Review to see which is better for your needs.

[peter nap]

Welcome to the site from a fellow Virginian.

What everyone else said but one other thing. I think you mentioned them looking bad when viewed from another computer. You need to calibrate your monitor and establish your color profiles. You'd be amazed how much difference there can be.

[ferymark]

A few things to think about are, like bob said, where ever you are uploading your images to, do they automatically resize your images to a lower resolution? This would be the main reason that they dont look sharp. Also another things is, What PPI, (Pixel's Per Inch) are you saving your images with? The DPI does not matter, unless you are printing them, DPI ( dots per Inch) really depends on what your printer can do. As far as noise and grain, that should not change when uploading or resizing. you said that you resize them as a 4X6 for printing and uploading.. Why do that for printing, when you could have the highest resolution available?