Loosing picture quality after uploading photo's

[gerrygoat]

The pics I just uploaded of the white robin into the gallery don't have the same crispness as the same pic on the camera. When I downsize the photo it seems to loose the picture quality. Is there something I can do to change this?

[Bow Walker]

What camera are you using? How fast was the exposure? How fast was the ISO setting? All these things will impact picture clarity - not to mention any small vibration/movement as you depress the shutter release.

I went to the gallery and looked at a couple of the shots. When I opened them I clicked again to enlarge them as large as they would go. They didn't look too bad at the maximum enlargement.

Also - what format are you uploading in? JPG looses quality pretty fast when transferred.

[Marc]

A lot of it depends on how you're trying to reduce the image. If you make several attempts to shrink an image every time you do so you lose quality. Your best bet would be to crop the image so you have less to reduce.

[kennyj]

Good info guys,I've had the same problem.
Kenny

[Marmo+]

You are going from a higher resolution to a lower resolution. Lets say you go from 1600x1200 to 800x600....you are basically taking 4 pixels of information and cramming them back into 1 pixel. Its going to lose quality, period. Nothing you can do to fix that, ever. Nothing.

Check what type of compression you are using for the jpegs. If you save as a jpeg often you will be prompted to select compression amount. Less compression = larger file size (not image size, file size) but better quality.

If you are uploading images to say, photobucket, it will compress them for you and you will probably get worse quality than if you run them through photoshop and reduce the image size yourself.

hope this helps

[gerrygoat]

The original picture was 3264x2448 which I resized on my camera to 1600x1200. I uploaded the picture to the computer and then had to resize it to 640x480 to post it in the gallery. I think the last one is where I lost the picture quality. Next time I will try to resize it on my camera all the way before putting it on the computer. The camera is a Panasonic DMC-FZ18 an 8 megapixel camera with an 18 optical zoom, I just bought it about a month ago. In the next month I should be posting a lot of pics of black bears, I am very exited about getting some good wildlife shots. This camera was highly rated on a website called Steve's digicams. I used the sports setting on the camera and a tripod to keep it steady for the robin.

[Marmo+]

Nice camera! If it shoots raw, shoot raw! You then have exposure control in photo manipulation programs like photoshop (which you can buy OR find online), instead of jpeg compression right off the bat, and clamped image values. Raw is the way to go. I assumed my canon shot raw and it doesnt. I was pissed at myself when i got it home.

[Steeleco]

I've always found that if I upload my max res pictures to www.Photobucket.com then copy paste them to here of other sites, they maintain their quality, the size is the only thing changed. Can't wait for the pictures, with a camera like that I imagine they'll be great.

[Marc]

I'm using a 10 megapixal camera and I try and crop the picture if I can so you don't lose the quality of the picture. I always use the highest setting on the camera and adjust the picture size when I get home. I always save the big pictures to my computer in case I decide to do something with it later. You should be able to upload a 900 x 900 picture to the website. The picture software on the site does reduce the resolution, it would take no time to fill the hard drive if we were uploading 5mb pictures.

[gerrygoat]

Thanks guys, I do have a lot to learn about photography but it is something I really want to get in to. I will try to get a bigger picture on there next time.