Images uploaded appear soft...

[bhusk]

I replied to a thread about this and realized it was in the PaD forums, so I thought I'd repost here seeing as this is probably the right place for it...

Anyways....

I swear, my images on my computer look sharper than the ones I've uploaded to pbase. When I look at some other galleries though, the images look nice and sharp, so I'm confused as to what I'm doing wrong.

I resize my images to 800 on the long end and the very last thing I do before i save to jpg is I USM at around 90%, .3, 0.

Should I be saving as jpg and THEN applying my USM? Although even when I save to JPG after applying USM, the picture still looks sharp on my computer, but not the version I've uploaded to pbase.

One other thing I do is, after I've resized the image to 800, I increase the canvas size by .25 inches and add a drop shadow (you can see that on every one of my pictures in my gallery). So the resulting image is slightly larger than 800 on the long end due to the increase of the canvas. Would this make my images too large so pbase compresses it?

I don't understand why my images would appear soft if pbase does not change the image.

Thanks for any information in advance!

[graylady]

Pbase max width for the large size is 800. If you exceed this you get an "original" size which is as you uploaded it. The "large" size was reduce and lost sharpness.

Adding your border make your pictures exceed the 800 limit so pbase create 3 sizes (small, med, large) beside your original. Pbase do not sharpen after resizing as far as I know.

Graylady

[dang]

LOL,
I just posted a link there, but will here too so if anyone else looks in. Here's a tutorial by another pbase member that looks pretty good. They've gone to a lot of trouble to do it, and it's laid out in a gallery very nice. It might be just what you're looking for:
http://www.pbase.com/arn/tutorial_sharpening

[bhusk]

LOL,
I just posted a link there, but will here too so if anyone else looks in. Here's a tutorial by another pbase member that looks pretty good. They've gone to a lot of trouble to do it, and it's laid out in a gallery very nice. It might be just what you're looking for:
http://www.pbase.com/arn/tutorial_sharpening

Thanks, I've glanced over that some, but my pictures DO look sharp until I upload them to pbase.

I noticed that i have the small, medium and large, as posted above, but all my pictures are set to display original by default. Am I misunderstanding, or should this not be compressed by pbase?

Here's an example. Keep in mind, I was trying to make the chips out of focus and the cards sharp (although I need to redo it and try to make them appear even more out of focus). The cards look very sharp on the jpg version that resides on my pc, but somewhat soft on pbase.

Thanks again for your responses!

[dang]

If your choices are small, medium & large they're all compressed by pbase. It should show small, medium & original or somethings not quiet right (and why I posted the link). It's taken me over a year to finally get where I'm getting the sharpen level like I want. And it was mainly trial & error because most tutorials are good, but every photo is going to be different and require different adjustments due to the amount of detail & other factors. And most tutorials are written concerning printing. Since he uses pbase himself, He'll be familiar with any pbase quirks you could ask questions direct if need be. Here's one of my most recent, and I'm still a bit hit & miss at times.
http://www.pbase.com/dang/image/55355504/orginal
medium version:

[bhusk]

Yeah, it was a very good article and one that I will be referencing the next time I'm doing post processing!

So I guess I need to factor in canvas size

Thanks for your help!

[dang]

Your very welcome, but the one who wrote the tutorial is the one deserving thanks. I'm just glad I knew about it so I could pass it on. I hope it helps.
Happy shooting!

[bhusk]

Hrm, what the heck?

I totally added my extended canvas and THEN resized the entire image, so now I should be within my 800px range. It's exactly 800px and I only have small medium and original available to view now.

So why does this picture look so TERRIBLE??? This time it isn't so much softness, but the color is completely washed out! However, when I open the file on my computer the red is extremely vivid.

I used ProPhoto RGB in both RAW and PS. It doesn't seem to be a monitor issue because when I look at the picture on my hard drive the color looks fantastic. As soon as I upload it to pbase it looks like utter crap...



Here is a crop of a screenshot of the photo as it looks in my Picture Viewer. There is a HUGE difference...



I'm sure I'm probably doing something wrong, but what? Do I need to change the color space to adobe RGB before saving?

[bhusk]

Argh! Pbase doesn't like ProPhoto. Once I converted to ARGB 1998 it's fine now.

Sheesh =/

[dang]

I think this might be about the most helpful thing I could add to this. I think you might enjoy reading through it:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutor ... -rgb.shtml

[bhusk]

Thanks, I've actually read that. In fact, that's why all my recent zoo shots were IN prophoto

The thing is though, his article describes the cons of prophoto's gamut range exceeding that of the human eye. So if there were colors in that photo that exceededhuman vision gamut range, you'd see those huge color blemishes no matter where you viewed the photo.

This seems more related to how pbase displays photos because the change occurs after the image is uploaded.

I wish it would let me process my photos and leave them alone when I upload them. I paid for the space and I should decide how much space each photo takes up and how they look.

[dang]

There's something that it may not tell...
Photos on the web are displayed in sRGB 8 bit, and every color space isn't shown on sites. Thus, color change. Processing in Abode RGB will still be replaced, so you're not realy posting what you've processed if I understand right. It's been awhile since I looked into all these things, but we've talked about it a few times and I'm sure many more to come. You might do a search here, or even better do a google.

[bhusk]

There's something that it may not tell...
Photos on the web are displayed in sRGB 8 bit, and every color space isn't shown on sites. Thus, color change. Processing in Abode RGB will still be replaced, so you're not realy posting what you've processed if I understand right. It's been awhile since I looked into all these things, but we've talked about it a few times and I'm sure many more to come. You might do a search here, or even better do a google.

Yes, there's definitely still a change, but the adobe rgb does look much better. I notice the colors fade even still after uploading to pbase.

I convert the file to 8 bit (you have to to be able to save as jpg) and then I save it as the 12 setting (highest). I almost wonder if pbase needs a lower jpg quality?

thanks for your time, dang, you rock

[rickl52]

I convert the file to 8 bit (you have to to be able to save as jpg) and then I save it as the 12 setting (highest). I almost wonder if pbase needs a lower jpg quality?

What Pbase needs is images saved in sRGB because it's going to convert them and clip the colors if you don't. It's doubtful you gain any quality saving the image at quality levels higher than 9 or 10 but you can double the file size. Better you should control the conversion than letting the Pbase servers do it. Compared to other sites the processing that takes place at Pbase is a bit crude.
The reason for using wider gamut processing is for printing, and then only if your printer can handle the gamut. If it can't the printer software will do the color clipping and it may not look so good.

Rick

[dang]

Thanks Rick for clearing that up.
That's my understanding also. And at higher settings you'll slow down the upload process for people viewing. Not too bad in most cases, but it's too large for dial up connections...