About uploading photos to contact. Uploading large VKontakte photos in high quality

We all know that “contact” spoils the quality of the posted photos. If it is not so noticeable in photographs taken from a "soap dish", then for photographers who have spent a lot of time and effort on processing photographs, the difference is obvious. A colorful and vivid photo fades after adding a "contact" to the album. The work turns from a masterpiece into an ordinary "photo", of which there are millions. Let's use Photoshop for image processing.

Resizing

The photo in "contact" when viewed does not stretch more than 1000 px in width. We take this value as the maximum size in width / height. But when the size is reduced, the quality deteriorates, the photo becomes blurred. In order to minimize the negative effect, we will use the following algorithm:

Go to the window for changing the image (Image -\u003e Image size)
Resize the photo to one and a half from the desired size (1500px on the larger side)
Select Interpolation "Bicubic, Sharper" and save
Go to the image change window again
Resize the photo to the desired size (1000px on the larger side)
Select Interpolation "Bicubic" and save

We save it correctly!

If you save in the standard way, through "File -\u003e Save As", then a lot of unnecessary information will be saved with the photo. This will increase the size of the photo. Such a photo will display well on a local computer, but not on the Internet. In order to save a photo for the Internet, follow these steps:

Go to the window for saving image for web (File -\u003e Save for web and devices)
Choosing the JPEG format
Quality 80
Check the box "Convert to sRGB" and save

Applying this algorithm, our photos will not lose quality when posted on the social network "contact". Great photos to everyone!

P. S. If this method helped you - tell your friends about it in social. networks using the buttons below.

Tell your friends:

Uploading large high quality VKontakte photos | Photo lessons and photo editing

Today, the social network VKontakte is the most visited website in Russia, and is also included in the TOP of the most popular resources in countries such as Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. More and more young people register in the largest social network in the CIS and gradually master the technologies of this powerful portal.

One of the main functions of VKontakte is uploading photos, which is used by most of the members of this network. In this article, I would like to draw attention to how to properly upload large VKontakte photos so that they do not lose quality, but become even better than the original image. Interested? Read on ...

No loss of quality

Most people have already learned various tricks of this social network, for example, almost everyone already knows how to download music in contact, "pull" a video in HD quality, or transfer various types of files in messages to friends. But the main problem of most people was and remains one - not properly optimizing their photos before uploading. Users make elementary mistakes due to which their photos lose quality, become less clear, the picture is blurred, and also do not pay attention to banal color correction, which would help them to significantly improve the quality of their photos.

What should be done to avoid this? There are simple steps to follow:

1. Never upload original image

Owners of newer DSLRs and modern smartphones have a photo resolution of approximately 12+ megapixels, which means their photos are approximately 4928 pixels by 3264 pixels. But not many people know that the maximum allowable size for a VKontakte photo is 1280 pixels in width and 1024 in height. Accordingly, if you upload the original image to your album, then its quality may deteriorate significantly due to the fact that Vkontakte will reduce it to the required size. Because of this, distortions appear in the pictures that are visible to the naked eye.

Let's consider an example of such a photo. Below you see a photo, the size of which is 2585 × 1929. Pay attention to the distortion that appeared on the girl's legs (click to enlarge):

Now, consider the option with the same photo, only manually reduced in the photo editor:

The difference is immediately visible, isn't it? Therefore, always try to reduce your photos before uploading to your photo albums not only on VKontakte, but also on other social networks. the size limit is almost everywhere, and every time your photos will be compressed by site scripts.

2. Always sharpen the image

Absolutely whenever you zoom out your image, it loses its sharpness and becomes less quality. The so-called “blurring” of the picture occurs. to avoid this, after reducing the image, always add Sharpness (sharpness), thanks to this your photos will remain as clear, sharp, clean as they were before resizing (reducing).

3. Do color correction

Try not to be lazy and process each photo before uploading. Basic color grading will add saturation and a fresher look to your images. It doesn't take long, and the result is phenomenal. Consider an example of an ordinary photo uploaded to the social network VKontakte:

Now, pay attention to the image below, to which all of the above recommendations have been applied: downsizing, sharpening, color correction:

As you can see from the example, photography has taken on a completely new look, and is perceived completely differently. In order to learn how to properly reduce and sharpen your photos, we recommend our article titled How to reduce the size of a photo and increase the sharpness, and you can find a lesson on the simplest color correction in our article Color Correction in Color Efex Pro.

If you have any questions after reading this article, we will be happy to answer them in the comments to this article!

P.S. Do you visit our miniblog? Recently, we have had a lot of interesting articles, such as: Secrets of Autumn Photography, 5 Beginner Photography Mistakes, Taking Your Camera Through the Airport, and 7 Things You Forgot to Do When Buying Your First DSLR Camera. © Phototricks.ru

phototricks.ru

"Contact spoils pictures!" or How to pinch pictures for contact without losing quality.

How many times have I already heard this phrase from photographers and not only - “Contact spoils pictures! Look at the press, not on the screen! " There is, of course, a sense in this statement, but it is also not worth it to assert this categorically.

So, the task: How to squeeze pictures for contact without losing quality?

There are 2 main mistakes people make:

1) Upload photos of too large size and provide its reduction to the contact algorithm. 2) Uses a color space other than sRGB

Let us analyze the algorithm for compressing photos in Photoshop “for contact”, in which we take into account both of these factors.

--------------------

The optimal size at the moment, which is comfortable for a person to look at, and which does not suffer so much from pinching, is 1000 points along the long side. Compression is carried out in 2 stages.

Select the item Image, Image size

We expose one and a half size from the one we want to get, and choose the Bicubic reduction algorithm, clearer. This will sharpen the picture, but redundantly.

We get rid of "oversharp" by the second step - we set the final size, in this case it is 1000 points, and choose the Bicubic reduction algorithm for smooth gradients.

The next step is to save the photo to disk.

We select the file format JPEG, the quality is in the range of 75-85. Be sure to check the Convert to sRGB checkbox.

This must be done so that if you work, for example, in the Adobe RGB color space, and ordinary people have not even heard such a word, then in this case, they will see exactly the same picture on their screen as you do.

All. Upload to contact. We leave the "Enhance photo clarity" bird.

westkis.com

How to upload photos to social media correctly

When you upload your profile photos to Facebook, they are cropped to a square, so it is best to use an image that already has the correct aspect ratio. The photo is displayed on a page with dimensions of 160x160 pixels, but you must upload a picture of at least 180x180 pixels. Therefore, open the photo in the editor available to you and set the dimensions to 180x180 pixels.

The size of the photo on the cover of the Facebook page is 851x315 pixels, while the minimum required size for it is 399x150 pixels. It should be borne in mind that such a small picture will stretch and look terrible, so select the appropriate photo and crop it correctly.

If you are planning to make both pictures - profile photo and cover - represent a single whole, keep in mind that the profile photo is 23 pixels to the right of the left edge of the cover and 210 pixels below the top of the cover.

There are many web services that allow you to create original covers for your Facebook page.

Pic Scatter allows you to create a collage of photos to use as a cover. You can generate it randomly or select a specific album.

Profile Picture Maker's Timeline Cover Banner is a pretty handy tool for creating custom covers with tons of editing features.

Face It Pages is a free service that allows you to upload your pictures, play with fonts, and even add links to other social networks in the cover.

Facebook supports uploading JPG, GIF and PNG formats. JPEG is typically used when uploading mixed tone images (photos and graphics), while PNG is better for graphics, text compositions, and logos. However, Facebook converts all uploaded images to JPG.

To make photos load faster on the page, the developers of the social network advise using JPG files in the sRGB color space. Recommended sizes for photos uploaded to the album are 600x400 pixels. When resizing in the photo editor, set the resolution (DPI) to 72.

2Twitter

Twitter displays a profile photo very small, so it is very important to choose an image that looks good in miniature. Twitter is cropping the photo into a square, so it's best to scale it properly before uploading it. While the maximum file size for a Twitter avatar is 2MB, your profile will display a 73x73 pixel picture, and even smaller tweets will display 48x48 pixels.

The image used as a cover on Twitter has a recommended scale of 1200x600 pixels, and the file size is limited to 5 megabytes. Keep in mind that your Twitter name, nickname, bio, location, and URL will appear over the cover, so choose a picture that will show your text clearly.

You can use a dedicated web tool like this to make the perfect cover photo to match your profile photo.

3 "VKontakte"

The profile picture "VKontakte" should have a maximum size of 200 pixels in width by 500 in height (previously it was possible to upload an image up to 700 pixels in height) and a minimum size of 200x200 pixels. When choosing a suitable photo, make sure that it looks good in a miniature, which will be displayed next to the entries left on your behalf.

When uploading pictures to albums, you do not need to upload images of the original size and trust to reduce them to the VKontakte algorithm. It is best to save a photo with a maximum of 1000 pixels in width (for horizontal) or 700 pixels in height (for vertical). At the same time, they will be displayed large enough on monitors of 1280x1024 and higher with optimal sharpness, which can also be adjusted. True, on monitors 1024x768, such pictures will be reduced and lost in clarity.

“We upload photos not with 100% quality, but with compression. Whatever coefficient we use, you can always find artifacts in photographs, ”technical support writes to VKontakte. For optimal clarity, social media experts recommend sharpening after resizing the image, not before.

To upload large pictures that would be displayed in the entire window on any monitors, before uploading it is worth slightly sharpening them in the photo editor, which partially compensates for blurring when scaling the picture. The largest uploaded photo can be 2560x2048 pixels.

When saved in JPG format, the current rendering profile is added. And when scaling the image, this profile is replaced with standard sRGB, without any conversion. Therefore, it is better to save the picture in sRGB before uploading to the social network. To do this, open the image in Photoshop, select "Save for WEB" (Alt + Shift + Ctrl + S), in the appeared quality settings window, be sure to mark "Convert to sRGB"

Text

Rodion Danilov

Selecting photos for social media is important, although many people underestimate it. They represent you on the web, and it is by looking at them that most make up the very first impression of you. We looked at how you can optimize photos on Facebook, Twitter and VKontakte.

1 Facebook

There are many web services that allow you to create original covers for your Facebook page.

Pic Scatter allows you to create a collage of photos to use as a cover. You can generate it randomly or select a specific album.

Profile Picture Maker's Timeline Cover Banner is a pretty handy tool for creating custom covers with tons of editing features.

ace It Pages is a free service that allows you to upload your pictures, play with fonts and even add links to other social networks in the cover.

Facebook supports uploading JPG, GIF and PNG formats. JPEG is usually used when uploading images with mixed tones (photos and pictures)while PNG is better for graphics, text compositions and logos. However, Facebook converts all uploaded images to JPG.

2 Twitter

To make the perfect cover photo to match your profile photo, you can use a dedicated web tool such as

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There are two main questions to VKontakte photo hosting: what image size will the uploaded photos have and what quality they will be. A week ago, I wrote about the size of photos uploaded by VKontakte that there are two ways through the explorer and Drag & Drop. In other words, these methods are called download via flash and HTML5. To get large photos in your albums, you need to use the second method. After that, I carefully studied the records about the VKontakte photo loader in order to approach the second question: the quality or the image compression algorithm. I publish the second material on my website, due to the demonstration of original and compressed photographs in different ways.

First, you need to determine the moment in which resolution the user looks at photos most often. Most monitors have 1280 pixels on the long side, the statistics can be raised, it will confirm this. Using the browser in full-window mode, the user will receive an output image with a long side of 1050-1060 pixels, depending on the program. In order to achieve maximum quality from VKontakte in conjunction with any browser, it makes no sense to upload larger images, otherwise the photos will be compressed by VKontakte or a browser script. The task is to achieve from the VKontakte processor a minimum of operations on images, the photographer must control the size of the output image and the parameters of sharpening.

Secondly, the VKontakte photo processor works with sequential or sequential JPEG, when the image is encoded block by block from left to right and from top to bottom. VKontakte does not support progressive JPEG.

Now I'll tell you about the experiments that I did with the image. I took a photo of the main building of Moscow State University, overlaid a copyright with a red heart, this color matters. I saved the image with 100% quality, saved its copy with increased sharpness and 100% quality. All operations can be read from the name of the original files.

Uploaded photos on VKontakte. Flash or HTML5 method does not matter as long as we do not go beyond 1280 px on the long side, the compression quality is the same. First photo is original uploaded via flash, then HTML5, third photo is sharpened.

The Live Community Q&A contains excerpts from a dialogue with VKontakte support, which claims that the VKontakte image processor compresses by 20%. This is not the case, according to my conservative estimates of 40% or more. To demonstrate my assertion, there are two files, original and zipped, saved in Photoshop via Save for WEB with a quality of 60. Only with a decrease in quality by 40%, I received files of similar size. The compression algorithm for VKontakte images is not described anywhere.

The last step, the most interesting one, is image comparison. Difference mode was used to compare two images. Two identical images in the Difference blend mode will give a black field. It makes no sense to compare the original with 60% quality and the file from VKontakte, there is a difference, but there is no reference point for the image quality. Examples of comparing the original 100% and 60%, then the original 100% and compressed by the VKontakte processor. As you can see in the image, there is a difference, but it is not significant. In order to visually evaluate the deterioration of the image quality, the contrast is forcibly raised by 8 times, the light point of the contrast curve is shifted by 224 points.

The difference between the original 100% and 60% preservation quality.

The difference between the original is 100% and the VKontakte processor. The second image has much more artifacts, less detail and less contouring.

Prosharpened original 100% and after the processor VKontakte. The situation is similar to the previous picture. There is a difference in the quality of the images, but it can only be detected when the problem is artificially amplified.

By and large, the VKontakte processor has one drawback - it does not work well with uniform colors, especially with red. I asked at the beginning to pay attention to the red heart on the copyright, it is almost uniformly red. There are a maximum of artifacts on the photos uploaded on VKontakte on this section of the image. From my experience of shooting, processing photos and VKontakte publications, I can say that I constantly observe this in concert photographs with red, blue, green spotlights. Also, VKontakte does not work well with color gradients, such photos are in stripes. The main thing is to know these shortcomings of the VKontakte processor so that the published photos look high quality.

The latest selection of images to demonstrate acceptable quality produced by the VKontakte photo processor. On the left is the original 100% of the image, on the right after loading VKontakte.

On the left there is a broached original image with 100% save quality, on the right, uploaded by VKontakte.

Output. How to upload high quality VKontakte photos? Determine the size of the image, raise the sharpness of the reduced image, save it in Photoshop with the maximum quality settings, load VKontakte. If we want to save an image on a social network from 1280 to 2560 in size, we use the Drag & Drop method when uploading.

Users are known to upload a huge amount of photos to social media. Uploaded in social. image networks are "compressed" in a certain way. The process of compressing images is required in order to reduce the space they occupy on servers. Large compression carries with it distortions that we can observe in social media. networks when viewing downloaded images.
Today the social network Vkontakte provides the ability to upload an unlimited number of images. And most of all, the disadvantages of such loaded images are noticeable from the side of changing the sharpness of these images. However, the social. Vkontakte network has one feature - images are compressed depending on the way they are loaded.
Social Vkontakte network has two types of downloaders: Flash downloader and HTML5 downloader. The presence of two methods for uploading images allows users to choose the quality of the uploaded images on Vkontakte.
In this article, we'll talk about the differences between Flash and HTML5 downloaders. It will also explain how and when to use a particular bootloader.

Flash downloader

Flash downloader is a "fast photo download". For example, if you have a huge number of photos from your vacation, most of which claim to be uploaded. It would be logical to make sure that such photos are uploaded to a social network in the fastest way. This way is compressing photos -reducing the quality and resolution of images (hence, the volume of images is reduced).
Vkontakte, when using the Flash uploader, compression occurs if the photo has a resolution of more than 1280x1024 pixels (in length or in width). Compressed in social media network, the photo will be of lower volume and resolution than its original, as well as poorer quality than the original photo.

Photos uploaded to Vkontakte may have an effect such as sharpening or de-sharpening... The change in sharpness is associated with an incorrect change in the resolution of the original photo and optimization of its quality.
For example, after loading large images (about 5000x3000 pixels), the sharpness is not enough and it seems to you that the image is of poor quality. And for smaller images (1920x1080 pixels), the sharpness becomes more than we would like to see. It is clear that such changes are caused by the compression of the uploaded photos.
Compression does not always happen when using the Flash loader.

If the resolution of your photo does not exceed 1280x1024 pixels (both in length and in width), then there will be no compression, therefore, along with this, the sharpness will remain the same.

With the Flash uploader, photos can be loaded as follows:

In this case, the Flash loader will be used. Uploaded images with a resolution on one side higher than 1280x1024 pixels will be scaled down to resolution1280x1024 (on the larger side). Also, the quality of the images will deteriorate slightly and their sharpness will change.

In fact, all this will not play a big role for you if you upload photos without creative intentions or just to show your friends. In other words, if you use the Vkontakte social network for its original "purpose".
It is important to remember that due to the poor quality of a reduced copy of a photograph, it may not be perceived by the viewer as the author wanted. Such incidents on social networks occur quite often, since most of the photos are viewed by users with a quick "scrolling". Many users may not even be aware that the photo, in fact, exists in a higher resolution than they see it, in a reduced version when viewing Vkontakte.
When we "upload the original" of a similar photo from the social. network, to our disk, we will see that the photo uploaded using the Flash uploader in social. the network has the same low resolution as it has with the enlarged view in the window of the social network Vkontakte (no more than 1280x1024 pixels).

HTML5 downloader

If you want to upload photos to social. Vkontakte network without changing the original resolution and quality, then there is an HTML5 downloader for you.

If you upload photos using HTML5 downloader, the resolution of such photos will not change after uploading. In other words, you can download your photos back to your computer in JPEG format (or to another device) from social media. networks in the same resolution as they were before uploading to social. net.

Unfortunately, the HTML5 downloader also has its limitations.

The largest photo when using HTML5 uploader should not exceed 2560x2048 pixels.

If the photo is larger than2560x2048 pixels, it will be reduced in resolution to2560x2048 pixels (on the larger side). Compressing such images introduces small changes in sharpness. Such changes in sharpness will be less than in the case of the Flash loader.

To date, the Vkontakte service allows you to upload photos to social. web using HTML5 downloader in the following way.

You need to go to the section "My photos" (Fig. 1),in the opened category you will see the inscription "Add new photos" as in (Fig. 2)... You need to manually drag the selected photos from the explorer with the mouse cursor directly to the panel "Add new photos" as in Animation 1(if it doesn't load, try creating an album and uploading images to it in the same way). Now all the selected photos will appear in the photo upload list. Photos will load an order of magnitude slower than using the Flash uploader.

If you are not very familiar with the operating system installed on your computer, then you can implement this method, for example, by opening the standard Windows Explorer over the browser window. Arrange windows so that you can easily drag and drop selected photos (Animation 1).

Animation 1

Also HTML5 downloader works when you the function of attaching Vkontakte photos is used. For example, when uploading photos to a dialog or attaching images to support.

Figure: 4

Now, if you open an image on your device, you can evaluate its quality and resolution, with which the image is in social. Vkontakte network.

Summarize

Flash loader:

images with a resolution greater than 1280x1024 pixels are reduced to a resolution of 1280x1024 pixels (on the larger side), while a noticeable (when viewing Vkontakte) change in sharpness and a slight loss of quality will occur;

images are loaded back from social. networks to disk in "new" reduced resolution, if their original resolution was greater than 1280x1024 pixels.

HTML5 downloader:

images with a resolution greater than 2560x2048 pixels are reduced to a resolution of 2560x2048 pixels (on the larger side), while a slight (when viewing Vkontakte) change in sharpness and a slight loss of quality will occur;
images are loaded back from social. networks to disk in "new" reduced resolution, if their original resolution was more than 2560x2048 pixels.

Now we can give an exact answer to the question:

You need to use HTML5 downloader.
Photo resolution should not exceed 2560x2048 pixels (on either side).

Of course, all these facts about technical methods of uploading to social. the Vkontakte network is valid for today. It is possible that in the future in the social. Vkontakte network, this problem will completely disappear. But, in any case, the original photo will always remain the same and look different. You just need to know that it is the original and choose the "screen" on which to watch it.