How to Upload an Image to Facebook at Full Res
WHY DO PHOTOS Await BAD ON FACEBOOK?
Posting and processing images on Facebook has been a problem for me for quite a while. Pretty much all my social and photographic activeness ends up on that platform and in the absenteeism of more physical wallspace for prints, my Facebook wall is my only real creative outlet.
How frustrating to discover that Facebook is scrupulously compressing my images into nasty, crunchy low item files. Information technology's a problem all united states of america photographer's face.
We want to show the world our best piece of work but unfortunately, the earth is on Facebook...
So, how to fight back?
None of what follows is going to mean your images will be perfect on Facebook simply they may well look a lot better than they did previously.
HOW TO UPLOAD THE Best POSSIBLE PICTURES TO FACEBOOK
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Add actress brightness. Facebook has a white background that volition brand your images look darker and bleed them of color.
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Don't compress your images - Facebook will shrink the image a second time!
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Export them at full 300DPI resolution
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Use a JPG Format at 100% quality
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Make sure the longest border is exactly 2048px
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Salve the sRGB Colour Profile into the Image
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Sharpen your photo for screen
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Use a Vertical Ingather if possible.
Add Extra BRIGHTNESS & A LITTLE SATURATION
Facebook has a white background which volition bleed the paradigm of brightness. Your image will expect darker against a white groundwork.
This is why most photographers apply a night grey / black background on their websites, this boosts the appearance of effulgence and saturation.
DON'T DOUBLE YOUR COMPRESSION
There are a whole raft of blogs and manufactures out there which spend a lot of time telling people to compress their images when exporting for web use to around 70% quality.
That's good communication for posting to your website or to a Wordpress weblog because the file size will be much smaller and load much quicker and yous definitely want your website to look good and load quickly.
Still, it doesn't make a positive difference for Facebook because all that will happen at present is that Facebook will compress your already compressed shot even more!
I tested this extensively on Facebook. I uploaded a maximum quality image and a 70% 72DPI image to facebook on a standard group timeline. I then downloaded each image to compare them.
I found that the previously uncompressed image had been compressed by Facebook and was now just 22% of the original size. However, the pre-compressed image was 20% of the total resolution original. Small gains but a gain still. Comparing the newly downloaded images to each other revealed that the uncompressed file was eleven% larger than the pre-compressed file afterwards Facebook had finished with them.
I went even farther. I re-uploaded (is that a word?) the previously 70% compressed epitome to Facebook. Information technology should have already optimised this image right? Facebook should have accustomed it with open up arms and done precisely zip. Not a chance! The image got compressed farther - another 11% in fact!
DON'T Downwardly SAMPLE YOUR DPI
Ignore all the advice about downsampling your pic to 72DPI (to prevent theft). On Facebook, it volition make no difference - they are going to compress the crap out of information technology anyway... Leave it at 300DPI and let Facebook handle it.
PNG CONVERSION
While information technology was certainly the case a while back that Facebook actually posted PNG'southward (they can't be compressed because they are a lossless format). Facebook now converts them to JPG'due south on upload and then compresses them further.
So while it was true that PNGs looked way better in the past, it is no longer true.
The theory behind exporting as a PNG and uploading to Facebook is that there will only be one stage of compression. This occurs in Facebook.
If you lot export to your difficult drive in JPG, well that means you have already practical one level of pinch in the conversion from RAW to JPG. Then, when Facebook gets the image, it will compress it once again.
When I tested this myself, I found the difference to exist undetectable. When I downloaded the Facebook converted PNG -> JPG file and compared it to the Facebook JPG -> JPG converted file, it was an identical size and looked identical to my eye.
So you can certainly endeavor the PNG trick merely I found no applied benefit. The downside is that PNGs are bigger and take upward more space on your difficult drive.
DIFFERENCES Between TIMELINE, GROUPS AND PAGES
There is a lot of information nigh the differences of posting to Timelines, Groups, Pages and Photo Albums (on high quality).
I have bought into this in the past but I decided to actually exam the principles. I uploaded my sample images to my timeline, a grouping timeline, my page and using 'loftier quality' in an album.
Gauge what? Each ane of them treated the epitome identically. When downloading the image I could encounter no difference any between them when pixel peeping at 100%. More than this, they were all of an identical size - even the so-called 'high quality' image!
Lesser line. It seems to make no divergence where you post.
BEST Crop RATIOS
Sizing images for social media is ever a bit of a moving goal postal service. The best sizes alter all the fourth dimension! But there has been a major tendency recently. More and more people are browsing the net on phones and have y'all noticed what format the average phone is? I'll give you a hint, it's vertical.
Whereas information technology used to exist the instance that verticals were shrunk into tiny pics on Facebook (considering nosotros all used computers to look at these sites) now we use smartphones and the vertical/portrait image is back with a vengeance.
Sites like Pinterest & Tumblr all promote verticals and Facebook has just joined the guild. Y'all volition annotation that your image volition accept upward a far bigger piece of screen real estate (on phones information technology is called the viewport) than they did in the past.
If you can't post a vertical, so at to the lowest degree post a square. The 6x6, the Hasselblad medium format ratio, is back - thank Instagram for that!
WHAT SIZE PHOTO TO UPLOAD TO FACEBOOK?
Sizing your image is tricky. Larger images most definitely look ameliorate on Facebook, but they are at risk of theft. Not and then much for print, but for use on websites and as web images.
I'm not sure there is much we can do about that other than to postal service small images that don't calibration very well. The good news (or bad?) is that hardly anyone will click your image to view it full size anyhow. The measly timeline width is all you are really going to need. And remember, nearly people will be looking at it on a tiny telephone screen anyway.
Facebook actually publish what they do to images...Yes, who knew! Check the latest advice hither.
The current supported sizes for normal images are:
• 720px
• 960px
• 2048px (size will yield the all-time quality and fewest compression artefacts)
So I went alee and tested 2048px v 1080px v 960px and I got some very interesting results.
When looking at the images side-past-side on the timeline I got a hint that the 2048px images were marginally amend. You can't download the paradigm from the timeline for comparing so I had to exercise it by middle.
When opening the images total size, the supported file sizes of 2048px and 960px looked ameliorate than 1080px just it was very marginal betwixt 960px and 1080px.
When downloading the images from Facebook and downsampling it was absolutely clear that the 2048px won out over the rest.
The red box indicates an area I masked to show the racket sample from a 2048px image compared to a 1080px image later downsampling to 1080px - 2048px is clearly a lot better!
Is information technology me or is the lower 2048px prototype marginally sharper than the 960px in the timeline? Either fashion, there is very little in information technology when comparison timeline images.
The sizing puzzler is therefore clear. If you desire the best quality and are less worried about theft, then 2048px wins. The other supported Facebook sizes of 960px and 720px come second and third. Avert non-standard sizes, they announced to be resampled to accomplish the nearest standard size in terms of equivalent DPI.
Use sRGB Colour PROFILES
Colour, every bit most photographers know is a very tricky problem. The reason is that our cameras can capture more colours than the net (standard sRGB) can prove.
More than than this, we take admittedly no control over whatever cruddy and poorly calibrated screen our viewer is staring at. The typical issues with screens are usually to do with gamma levels and brightness every bit well equally poor color profiles.
But wait, there is more than bad news! Much of the software that people are using to browse the internet is not color managed either (and nor is much of the photo-browsing software loaded on our own computers - e.g Windows 10 Photos)!
One tip I can give you is to elevate your JPG into a Mozilla Firefox browser window to see how information technology will brandish on the internet. You lot can practice this because Firefox has the great reward of beingness a fully color managed browser.
When exporting your image from Lightroom or Photoshop ensure you have converted the colour contour to the internet standard sRGB.
This pace is VITAL. The reason is to cater to two groups of users; wide gamut displays and tablet/smartphones. Wide gamut displays demand to know that the epitome is in sRGB or they will non display properly - they will be over saturated.
Smartphones on the other hand exercise not generally recognise embedded ICC profiles. If we convert our images using Prophoto or Adobe1998 colour spaces they will appear under saturated on these devices. Converting to sRGB on export means that they will interpret the paradigm correctly - even though they don't know the paradigm is sRGB.
Here's the Lightroom CC dialog - Ensure your colour infinite is set to sRGB, the cyberspace 'standard' if I tin phone call it that.
Even when doing this, I have noticed that Facebook flattens color and contrast. I'd advise testing a few posts on Facebook and giving your export settings a wee boost to saturation and dissimilarity specifically for Facebook posts.
FACEBOOK LIGHTROOM SETTINGS
(Relieve this as an Export Preset)
If you didn't already know you can create specific export presets in Lightroom and then utilize these for all your Facebook images. Y'all can even create collections that practise this for y'all automatically once you lot have finished editing - only that, perhaps, is meat for another blog post.
Here'south another tip Use a carve up Lightroom Catalogue to manage all your social media output. I don't like JPG'due south cluttering up my processing catalogue.
I would likewise note that Lightroom omits settings for resizing and sharpening that are included in Photoshop. This added level of control may be important when reducing the size of the image, however, I have not really tested information technology.
Your Lightroom CC settings should be as follows:
WANT TO Accept YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY TO THE NEXT LEVEL?
Source: https://willgoodlet.com/blog/optimising-facebook-images
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