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Jawbone54 · Feb 27, 2008, 01:43 PM

I've noticed something nasty in the Social Networking world.

Somehow I'm losing color information or something when I upload pictures to Facebook. I noticed the same problem in MySpace before. When I take a picture like this...

...and upload it to Facebook, it looks like this:

Is there something I can do to change this, or do these sites simply compress the images and there's no way around it? I'm a bit of an idiot when it comes to some of this stuff. Help?

Dakar the Fourth · Feb 27, 2008, 01:45 PM

You am screwed.
Let others proceed with mocking myspace and facebook

By the way, the first picture is oversaturated.

Jawbone54 · Feb 27, 2008, 01:50 PM

Your sig is undersaturated.

Yeah, I kinda figured there was nothing I could do about it.

turtle777 · Feb 27, 2008, 02:07 PM

MySpook ? FakeSpace ?

No thanks...

-t

Peter · Feb 27, 2008, 03:00 PM

I wonder if they do what flickr used to do

keekeeree · Feb 27, 2008, 07:03 PM

Originally Posted by Dakar the Fourth

By the way, the first picture is oversaturated.

Seconded.

Good lies somewhere between the two. You may want to calibrate your monitor. Or if you're working these up in Photoshop, double-check the proof setting.

Visnaut · Feb 27, 2008, 07:56 PM

If you're using Photoshop, you have to convert the color space to Generic RGB. I think that's how I fixed it. I'm pretty sure that the uploading tools for many sites just don't support embedded color profiles.

d4nth3m4n · Feb 27, 2008, 07:58 PM

Figure out what their image size parameters are and their average file size is and optimize for that in photoshop. It's probably their image uploader foxing with your pic.

Railroader · Feb 27, 2008, 08:53 PM

Are you using Firefox to view the webpages? I don't know if it has been fixed, but FF doesn't display as wide of a color gamut as Safari. Camino/Firefox vs. Safari -- Image Quality Difference (HUGE) on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

More: help - Making sure your photos look great on SmugMug- powered by SmugMug & SmugBlog: Don MacAskill � Blog Archive � This is your Mac on drugs

- - e r i k - - · Feb 27, 2008, 10:22 PM

Haha. This is funny.

But to answer your question: Yes, Facebook recompresses your pictures. It's no Flickr or SmugMug, so I guess we just have to deal. You can always get the Flickr application for Facebook

Jawbone54 · Feb 28, 2008, 01:39 AM

Originally Posted by keekeeree

Seconded.

Good lies somewhere between the two. You may want to calibrate your monitor. Or if you're working these up in Photoshop, double-check the proof setting.

No, I know he was right. I was just being stupid in the reply.

It's not the monitor that's the problem. I didn't care to do much editing of the shot in Photoshop. It wasn't for a client; it was just a family shot. I slide the sliders around nonchalantly in Lightroom and got a little too happy with the vibrance adjustments.

Whoops.

Jawbone54 · Feb 28, 2008, 01:42 AM

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - -

Haha. This is funny.

But to answer your question: Yes, Facebook recompresses your pictures. It's no Flickr or SmugMug, so I guess we just have to deal. You can always get the Flickr application for Facebook

I love the Flickr app.

I'm not absolutely in love with either social networking service, but I absolutely despise MySpace. I have to keep both for working and easily communicating with youth, but I'd probably just keep a very casual Facebook if I didn't have that connection.

Jawbone54 · Feb 28, 2008, 01:45 AM

Thanks for all the responses, everyone. I'll be trying everything everyone said.

It's not a huge ordeal. I just noticed a photographer friend of mine had perfectly saturated shots on Facebook and I was frustrated that his could look fine but mine looked like...that.

James L · Feb 28, 2008, 02:46 AM

Originally Posted by Jawbone54

I've noticed something nasty in the Social Networking world.

Somehow I'm losing color information or something when I upload pictures to Facebook. I noticed the same problem in MySpace before. When I take a picture like this...

...and upload it to Facebook, it looks like this:

Is there something I can do to change this, or do these sites simply compress the images and there's no way around it? I'm a bit of an idiot when it comes to some of this stuff. Help?

Hey JB,

Are these photos looking like this for you on the same computer, in the same browser?

I ask because Safari, and I think the new FF beta, are the only browsers that have colour management in them. All the other browsers display the images with the sRGB colour space.

I uploaded a bunch of pics a while back in the Adobe RGB colour space by accident. They looked fine on my Flickr in Safari so I never thought anything of it. I looked at them on a work computer (IE on PC) two days later and had the exact problem you described. I went back to my Mac and looked at the pics in my current FF as well as IE and they looked all desaturated also... because the browsers were rendering them in a different colour space then I had edited them in.

Jawbone54 · Feb 28, 2008, 02:19 PM

Hrrrmmmmm...I'm going to do some testing when I get out of class...

Macfreak7 · Feb 28, 2008, 02:23 PM

Cool article about facebook and its "privacy policy"
With friends like these ... Tom Hodgkinson on the politics of the people behind Facebook | Technology | The Guardian

el chupacabra · Feb 28, 2008, 02:36 PM

wel for what its worth I happened to email microsoft the other day about live space or whatever its called about pics.

they said they dont' change your pics unless its over 1MB in size. Maybe take a look at using them. see if its any better.

anyone who has a hotmail essentially has a spaces account so its worth a try.

CollinG3G4 · Feb 28, 2008, 02:53 PM

Originally Posted by Macfreak7

Cool article about facebook and its "privacy policy"
With friends like these ... Tom Hodgkinson on the politics of the people behind Facebook | Technology | The Guardian

Yah. Like Facebook is the first company to share user information and engage in target advertising. Shame on them for earning a profit on their free service at our expense.