jancohen Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Paul Mo wrote:
So the answer is to 2048px wide and at 99.9KB?
Do that upon export from your PP software and Facebook's algorithm of death won't molest it?
Paul.
Actually, no, but as a photographer myself, I understand why other photographers could think that was the optimal approach.
This is going to be a bit long in the tooth...
File size itself is going to be dependent on a number of things, but mostly the number of pixels (ppi/dpi) in an image, color bit depth, compression, etc., and will vary from image to image. Unless absolutely identical (which is no mean feat to achieve), a dozen images sized to 2048px wide by 1000px tall could all have different files sizes, ranging from relatively small files to much larger ones. In a similar vein, a dozen images all sized to 99.9KB would most likely differ in their onscreen widths and heights.
You can experience this yourself by trying to size a small collection (or even a couple) of images to 2048px wide and at 99.9KB at a specific resolution (e.g., 300dpi), which might result in a frustrating experience.
More important is resolution, which you have more control over. With respect to resolution and onscreen display, sizing an image properly will essentially be dependent on how large you want the image to appear on a particular screen size set for a particular screen resolution. Optimal image resolution will be driven by the screen you want to display your images on, and will differ depending on whether we're talking 1920x1200 @ 96dpi, IPS, retina, etc. That said, when it comes to the web, there's really no one set resolution that will work best, simply because of those varying screen sizes/resolutions and how web sites are set up to handle the display of images to fit their various page layouts. That's why now-a-days web designers/developers often create multiple copies of an image at varying resolutions, adding them to their web sites, while they strive for optimal quality. They don't necessarily currently do this for every image, mind you (most clients would find the billing unbearable), but do so for the most important images like logos and any others where "critical" sharpness is desired.
Now back to Facebook and how best to deal with adding images there: regardless of any one specific image you add there, chances are you are going to have to accept that some images will be modified by Facebook's image handling scripts, simply because of the way the web works, meaning client-server, web browser interactions. If someone accesses a Facebook page on their desktop screen, the web server determines which sized image best to serve to that screen. That could be a copy of an image 960px wide by 600px tall, at 96dpi. Similarly, if one views the same page using an iPhone with a Retina display, the server might respond with a copy of that image it saved at 192dpi (96x2), sized by the web developer to fit that screen's landscape. On the other hand, if varying image sizes weren't provided by the web developer for display in the different screens, the server will use an image it processed itself when the image was uploaded. There's usually no getting away from that as most web sites today have provisions in their code to generate copies of images in various sizes (resolutions, if you will) upon upload, for use in the various scenarios.
And that's the key point. If you know how images are spec'd for the different purposes they might be used in particular web page/site, you can provide copies of those images that you optimized yourself before uploading them, such that the web server does little in the way of making changes to them. Doing so greatly allows you to avoid those compression algorithms we started this discussion with, as well as the sort of frustrations experienced by the original OP.
Sorry for the long-winded, rambling comment, but I hope it helped. Now, you might want to go back to that link I provided earlier , and read the post there some more. It's actually fairly informative
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