Yet Another Photography Question

[laurellanestudios]

With the help of Photoshop Elements, my pictures look decent. UNTIL, that is, I upload them to my web site. Then they suddenly look slightly out of focus.

Any ideas?

Another frustrating day working on photography!

[Cosmo]

How much are you compressing them when you save them? Also, it may be your web site or your browser. Which photos are you talking about? I looked at the ones on your site and they look fine to me.

[laurellanestudios]

You really think the web site photos look alright? They look out of focus to me and different from when they are in Photoshop.

Can you tell me more about compressing photos? Does that mean resizing them? If so, I'm going with 300 px for the small web shots and 600 for the enlargements.

Really appreciate your help. Once again, I'm spend far too much time on this!

[SuzyQ]

They don't look out of focus to me either.

[Juln]

They look alright to me...
you aren't using AOL, are you?

[laurellanestudios]

No, I'm not using AOL. Hmmm...even my husband thought they didn't look clear. Yet, other web sites look very clear to us.

I thought the mind, not the eyes, was the first thing to go??

Thanks for the feedback.

[LoriGreenberg]

Hi Kathy.

They don't look out of focus so much as they look a little pixelated to me...grainy. But then again, I'm anal when it comes to photos. :)

Did you resize them at all in another program after you put them on your web space?

[Cosmo]

You really think the web site photos look alright? They look out of focus to me and different from when they are in Photoshop.

Can you tell me more about compressing photos? Does that mean resizing them? If so, I'm going with 300 px for the small web shots and 600 for the enlargements.

Really appreciate your help. Once again, I'm spend far too much time on this!

300 px? As in resolution? Or width?

Try posting one of your photos here and see how it looks.

But as far as compression goes, when you save the file as a JPG it should give you options like "small", "medium", or "large", and one for "standard" or "progressive". What are those settings?

[laurellanestudios]

Thanks again, Chad.

Okay...originally when I saved photos (for the web) in Photoshop, I didn't change the settings. The compression quality setting was set at "low." However, yesterday I do remember saving a few pictures with the setting at "high."

Might this be why they look out of focus to me? Is "low" the way to go?

I really appreciate your help.

Kathy

[Cosmo]

No, higher is better. It could be your web server that is compressing them. Over-compression usually leads to degrading the image quality.