#1 June 10th, 2009 05:13 PM

vegany

Member

poor jpeg quality

Why are the jpegs so blotchy? I mean, this is 2009, and it doesn't take that much more bandwidth to increase the quality of the compression on the jpegs a little... It ruins skin, sky, fields of a single color. Check out the tarot card folio & look at her skin. I've been noticing it more often recently.

vegany

Member

Re: poor jpeg quality

Or look at the sky in skyblue... it's plain weird.

bobby

Member

Re: poor jpeg quality

Yeah I tend to agree Vegany, one of my the things that really offends my visual snobbery are compression artifacts, it's the worst things about the Internet (and big flat screen T.V's before HD broadcasting) however I've been told our level of compression is a compromise between the speed the pictures pop up and the quality. I'd be interested to know other peoples opinions, what is more important to you all?

Dags56

Member

Re: poor jpeg quality

What is more important to me is the speed the pictures pop up.  I am on dial up and it is slow enough now, and I do not need it any slower.  If I try to download a 3 minute video it takes me about 4 to 5 hrs so I am very selective as to what I watch.  They are worth the wait though.  A download of a folio is about an hour and a half to 2 hr's.  If I could get high speed I would but because of my location that is not an option.

Head

Administrator

Re: poor jpeg quality

I can't see the compression artefacts in the tarot shoot, can you nominate a picture?  I can see them in the sky but really, they are quite slight and where the detail is required, it's there.  This is an amateur project, some of the cameras aren't especially great and it would be pointless having 500Kb image files from a 3Mpix camera.  I think what we have is a good balance between spped and quality.  We appreciate your opinion though, thanks.

Dags56

Member

Re: poor jpeg quality

To get off topic a bit but still with jpeg quality, the Asha folio that just came out is very very nice but I thing that a button must have stuck as there is a lot of duplication in the pictures.

veronicaf

Member

Re: poor jpeg quality

Thanks Dags56.  Upload error.  Being fixed as we speak (well type)

vegany

Member

Re: poor jpeg quality

Sure, here are a few:

divination75 around the navel
divination 89 left hand
skyblue52 sky

Granted the artifacts aren't in the way of details here, but sometimes they are really distracting or get in the way of skin tones. Don't have the time to go looking right now.

I don't think it would be necessary to bump up the quality settings that much to get rid of the artifacts, just a tiny bit would help, like jpeg quality level 6 or 7 instead of 5. I'd even rather have *smaller* pictures without the artifacts personally, if file size is the issue.

So many of the photos on this site are so beautiful that it's just a shame to have the artifacts distracting from the beauty. Overall this is such a great site! You guys rock!

Head

Administrator

Re: poor jpeg quality

The problem is, to get a noticeable improvement you have to pretty much double the file size.  But we are looking at other ideas that migth help, like offering alternaitve versions.

nighteyes

Member

Re: poor jpeg quality

Please, please, please consider offering the images in higher resolutions. Preferrably not resized at all.
It's 2009, large screens are common and bandwidth really shouldn't be an issue.

arana

Member

Re: poor jpeg quality

There could be different options of the size of the zip file that can be downloaded (small, medium, large)