# Image Compression?



## Garuru_Wolf (Mar 10, 2012)

Hey guys, if this is the wrong place, please move it to the appropriate location. 

Every time I upload art to FA, the picture gets HORRIBLY compressed in the preview image, in the thumbnail...pretty much anything except full-view. Lines are jagged, colors get messed up, blocky pixels appear...I don't know how to avoid this. Sometimes my art is larger than the FA limits, so I can understand that; however, even when I upload a picture that's well within the upload dimension limit sizes, my image still gets mangled. Obviously this is upsetting because it makes my art look even worse than it already is. 

Does anyone know what might be causing this and how I might avoid/fix this problem? I see plenty of people upload art that's both larger than FA limit and within the limit, and their art always looks beautiful in preview, in thumbnail and full-view modes. I save my images as .PNG, just FYI. Not sure if that has anything to do with this problem.


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## jayhusky (Mar 10, 2012)

Can you provide a link to your userpage please? That way we can see what your seeing in terms of image issues.

As far as I'm aware this is the method of FA's upload system

Upload Image (GIF, PNG, JPG etc) 
                                             > If you DON'T specify a preview image it takes your submission and creates a scaled-down version in JPG format
                                             > If you DO specify a preview image, regardless of file type it will create a preview version in JPG/GIF format

GIF is quite well known as being poor with image quality, so a suggestion would be to optimise the image for GIF and then use that as your preview image for your submission.


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## Stratelier (Mar 10, 2012)

Really, complaints about low-quality thumbnail images are seriously overblown.

To be fair, we don't know what quality settings FA uses to generate those thumbs, but claiming that the thumbnails are of poor image quality is, well, missing the point of what a "thumbnail" even _is_.


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## LizardKing (Mar 10, 2012)

It's mainly the story/music/flash thumbnails that suffer from this, since the thumbnails used are so much smaller - and in some cases, automatically generated regardless of what the user supplies - and then enlarged from this small and badly compressed one.

It's due to get fixed "soon".


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## Armaetus (Mar 10, 2012)

Save your stuff with a low compression level to begin with.


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## Stratelier (Mar 10, 2012)

LizardKing said:


> ...and then enlarged from this small and badly compressed one.
> 
> It's due to get fixed "soon".



Oh, _that_.  Yes, that's something that needs to be fixed.


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## quoting_mungo (Mar 11, 2012)

If the PNG images you're saving have alpha channels/transparent areas, that's probably why - FA's image handling thingy doesn't deal well with transparency.


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## Devious Bane (Mar 12, 2012)

Previews and other non-"full view" images are compressed to JPEG if I'm correct.
There is no way around that, just use the "full view" link under the image itself for the uncompressed version. The "download" link works just as well.


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## createeasy (Feb 24, 2014)

Glaice said:


> Save your stuff with a low compression level to begin with.



really, will this work and solve this problem. that easy?


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## chesse20 (Feb 24, 2014)

createeasy said:


> really, will this work and solve this problem. that easy?


that and also make sure to not upload images bigger than 1200x1200
you can also super jpg compress so that whatever compression happens is unnoticeable


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## PheagleAdler (Feb 25, 2014)

chesse20 said:


> that and also make sure to not upload images bigger than *1200x1200*
> you can also super jpg compress so that whatever compression happens is unnoticeable



1280x1280...


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## quoting_mungo (Feb 25, 2014)

Also, for custom thumbnails, avoid crisp bright red lines/text. I have no idea why, but an observation I've made over the years is bright red on pretty much anything but plain black or white (and sometimes even then) seems many times more prone to jpg-artifacting badly.


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## Etiainen (Feb 25, 2014)

Stop using JPEG.
PNG offers much better quality.


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## PheagleAdler (Feb 25, 2014)

Etiainen said:


> Stop using JPEG.
> PNG offers much better quality.



I concur. PNG is superior to JPG.


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