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Image compression in news articles

modernizt

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This is a message for the admins/ those responsible for putting up articles on the site.

For a long time now I've been disappointed by seeing some great photographs posted in the articles, only for them to be compressed/ pixelated. Can you guys find a way to have the images accompanying the articles maintain their full visual quality when placing them up alongside text? The images posted in the boards are fine, but the versions used to accompany articles always have some sort of distracting jpeg compression issues happening.

Also, this is of lower priority, but I had asked months (possibly more than a year) ago if you guys could make it so that when clicking images to enlarge them, the larger version could be saved. (It's currently a setup where the enlarged image, perhaps due to Flash or something similar, cannot be right-click-saved). Obviously one can screen-shot the images but it's just not the same. You guys had said this change was in the works but nothing came about.

Not criticisms; just suggestions that I think would make the articles look much better and make the site more enjoyable for users.
 
In a related matter; I started uploading pics recently by going through UT instead of my hosting site and there is a noticeable difference in quality. The compression makes them look very fuzzy. Can anything be done? Please see comparison below. First oneis from my host, second from UT.


alumnihouse.jpg


alumnihouse.jpg
 

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In a related matter; I started uploading pics recently by going through UT instead of my hosting site and there is a noticeable difference in quality. The compression makes them look very fuzzy. Can anything be done? Please see comparison below. First oneis from my host, second from UT.

Your version is 171KB, and the UT version is 84KB. I can see why the UT admins would want to compress the images more: With all the images posted, it would save a ton of disk space and bandwidth.
 
Your pics. still usually look quite crisp in comparison to the ones in the news articles, android! (If that helps!) :)
 
Your version is 171KB, and the UT version is 84KB. I can see why the UT admins would want to compress the images more: With all the images posted, it would save a ton of disk space and bandwidth.

Even considering 84kB, and considering the lack of exif or embedded ICC profile, the photo is surprisingly soft. The blank sky, there's no details there to begin with either. 84kB should not be that soft.

Here's one I recompressed in Photoshop using Save for Web (no exif) and no ICC profile. At 85.5kB there is a similar amount of JPEG compression artifacts, but it is a lot sharper.

p533917069.jpg


I noticed that the UT version is not only recompressed, but also inexplicably resized by one pixel in each dimension. I think that is the reason for the softness.
 
It is something we are actively discussing but a fix is still a little bit away. I assure you that you have our attention on this one.
 
Good to know. Without an answer I assumed nothing was being done. I think it would be a huge improvement.

Thanks!
 
Still no fix for the image compression, eh?

I think now that UT is quite widely enjoyed, you guys should be improving the image quality. It's the biggest drawback to the updates/articles you guys post. UT is all about the visuals, the updates, the photographic construction updates, and the image compression on every update (the news articles, moreso than the actual boards) really takes away from the viewer's experience.
 

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