San Diego Photographer – Blog Page

Uploading pictures to Facebook has always made me a bit uneasy. They just don’t seem to have the same color, sharpness or “pop” that they have when viewed on my home computer. I suspected this was due to the way Facebook, resized, re-compressed or otherwise altered the image automatically on upload. Hence, this little tutorial on saving your images in the best possible way BEFORE uploading to your Facebook album for optimal results.

I started with a recent product image I thought had good sharpness and color.

Original image, squished a bit by Wordpress. Click to view full res.

The first thing to do is resize the image on our end to Facebook specs. This will ensure that what we see in terms of contrast and sharpness at 100% view will be pretty much what ends up on Facebook. No matter how awesome and “high res” your original picture is from your 2 million dollar 500 megapixel Hasselblad space age camera, Facebook will knock it down to 604 pixels by about 400 pixels, or about 1/4 of a megapixel. It will also end up in the sRGB color space at 72 PPI.

There is nothing wrong with this really.  To a computer monitor, everything above 72 PPI is basically superfluous. 72 PPI is the standard for web images. See this article for a more detailed explanation of PPI vs DPI.

For 90% of computer monitors, anything beyond good ‘ol sRGB color space is also a waste. Most monitors just can’t display the full spectrum of ProPhoto RGB or Adobe 1998.  I know some noted pros who shoot in JPG mode with the camera set to sRGB, and process their finals in 72 PPI. Keeping your “digital negatives” or RAW files in a larger color space might be a good idea for the future, but for the most part, on a computer monitor it is an unnoticeable difference. For print, go ahead and process your RAW files at 300 PPI in that big color space. You might just see a difference.

resizing the image

In Photoshop you can resize your image by going to image>image size. Make sure “constrain proportions” is checked and PPI is set to 72. Now set your long edge (width or height, whichever is greater) to 604 pixels. Let the other number change on its own to preserve the aspect ratio of your photo.

Next, double click the magnifier tool to view your image at 100%. I try to do most of my editing at 100% view since it is the most accurate portrayal of the image, not being “squished” to fit on your screen or magnified beyond its means to the point of pixelation.

Re-introducing shome sharpening (pun intended)

At this point the image can look a bit hazy from resizing. You can reintroduce some punch by using unsharp mask. Go to filter>sharpen>unsharp mask. Its a small image so I start with small numbers, an amount of about 60% and radius of 1/2 pixel. Tweak this to your own taste. There is no simple formula, it really depends on the subject matter in the frame, not just pixel and resolution numbers.

Voila! You’re now ready to save your image and throw it up on Facebook for your friends to see. One bonus of going through this is that, although it takes some time, it makes the upload go way faster since we are downsizing it preemptively.

Go to file>save for web. Since Facebook will add a bit more compression, I set my mode to JPG, quality to “100″ and make sure “progressive” is unchecked. “Save for web” automatically converts your file to sRGB color space by default. Web browsers can’t obey color profiles, so that’s the way to go for photographs bound for the web.

I also ran a version using “save as” instead of “save for web” to see if the quality would be any better. To be honest, it wasn’t much better.

Judge for yourself here in the Facebook gallery. Note the difference between the picture Facebook processed on its own versus the pre-sized and sharpened ones.

For those interested in VERY expensive knives, I shot about 70 knives for the Premier Knife Auction in Chicago. The print catalog will released soon, but you can see more photos of these collectible knives and join the online bidding at their auction site.

Thanks for looking!

**UPDATE- for a limited time, I am adding some free Photoshop actions for doing this automatically. I created them in CS3 so I cannot guarantee their compatibility with all versions. I just ask that if you download my free photoshop Facebook actions that you please come back and leave a comment to let me know what you think and if they worked for you. Click here: download free Photoshop actions (.ATN file format) .

Installation: Start Photoshop, press F9 to open the actions panel, click on the dropdown menu on the top right, click “load actions”, browse to your downloaded ATN file and enjoy!

**A couple of notes:

1.) The action will pause on the sharpening part so you can adjust your own sharpness levels.

2.) The resize is done using bicubic smoother. I feel that bicubic sharper is too sharp for my eyes sometimes. The pause offers you greater control of the final sharpness.

3.) The file is converted to the sRGB profile in Photoshop and, additionally, saved for web. I think this should help you see the same thing in your PS window as in your “save for web” window. (Correct me if I am wrong).

4.) There are two actions, one for portrait (vertical shots) and one for landscapes (horizontal shots). Be sure to use the correct one for your application.

5.) Don’t start with a hazy, underexposed picture and expect miracles to happen. This is meant to simply preserve the color and sharpness of your original file, NOT enhance it.

Enjoy! If you like this article, please help me out by posting a link to my blog or website at http://www.balancedigital.com. Thanks for reading.