Good quality uploads on Social
November 25, 2019
In the age of Instagram photographers, influencers, and ‘everyone and their mom is a professional photographer because they have a DSLR,’ we as photographers have to be informed on the platform that we use most. I’m mainly focusing on Facebook since Instagram has it’s own nuances and can only be posted on via their app. (and twitter…. meh).
What can we do to ensure our photos are at the upmost quality even when the places we are posting to compress it?
Here are a few pointers and examples:
DOs.
- Whatever program you use, resize your photo to 2000px (for whatever the longest side of your photo width or height).
- Don’t optimize your photo; save it at 100%.
- Upload your photo via the website (Facebook).
Don’ts
- Don’t use the mobile Facebook app to post your photos. Your photos will suffer from extreme compression and resizing. You can turn HD photos on in settings, but there are still some compression issues.
- Don’t upload full-resolution photos. Your photo will undergo more compression if it’s large and un-resized.
- Don’t feed the trolls. ;)
- Don’t upload low-resolution photos, make sure your photo is at least 2000 pixels on it’s longest side. (perspective, a current-gen iPhone is a 12MP camera, which outputs at least 4000 pixels on the longest side)
If you’re worried about the ‘pixel peepers’, upload your photo Flikr and put a link in your description, but most people understand that Facebook compression is a thing and it’s a thing we’ve all come to loathe.
Instagram:
Instagram doesn’t seem to suffer as much from the compression problem. Keep in mind the crop is a little different (4:5).
If you REALLY want size things for the web, here’s all the size references as of this writing:
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-image-sizes-guide/
Reference Material:
Most drastic differences:
