Photobucket issues and loss of quality in images

[ubiquitous]

An interesting observation (or maybe I'm nuts)...

I've been using Photobucket for imagehosting for years; never a problem. However recently, I've noticed that images that I upload/link to the forum are being degraded in quality/clarity; never noticed this before. In otherwords, looking at a photo on my harddrive I note a fairly significant difference in image quality compared to an image posted in a thread.

Does anyone else notice the same with their images?

[panerai153]

Ubi, I never use photobucket anymore, I always upload files from my computer.I believe that photobucket may be compressing files, or somehow reducing their size to conserve storage space.

Another thing, there are probably others that have the same problem I have. All of our work computers have "barracuda" which blocks all social networking, shopping sites, etc. photobucket is one of them, so I cannot see any photos on the forum uploaded using photobucket. Regular photo files are not affected.

[Utheman]

Yes I've noticed that. Prob what panerai153 said about saving on storage space and bandwidth issues.

Another thing I noticed is that the Pbucket images look much worse when views on my smart phone then when viewed on my desktop or laptop.

[dluddy]

I have the same issue Ubi...

I use photobucket from my iphone for the convenience when using Tapatalk to browse/post on the forum.

Imageshack posted images from my home PC does not do that

[ubiquitous]

Hmmmm... Very interesting. This definitely supports what I seem to be observing.

Thank you for the insight fellas!

//ubi

[freddy333]

I do not see that happening with my pics, which are generally resized to 1024x750 or so. Are you guys uploading larger (greater than 1600x1020) image files to Photobucket? If you are uploading directly from your camera phones, you are likely sending very large files. If so, they are probably being reduced (optimized) for a variety of reasons. Try resizing prior to uploading to Photobucket & see if they look better.

[Utheman]

What Freddy says makes sense. From my home computer, I usually resize to 800x600 before posting to Pbucket and see no degradation in image quality.

[Utheman]

Directly from the Photobucket website:

" If you have a free account, there is a cap on your maximum image size. Images are compressed to fit the 1MB / 2048x1536 size limit at the time of upload."

I did a search on Photobucket Image compression and there are a ton of unhappy/cheated customers (pro and free users). Apparently around Feb 2009, without informing its customers, Pbucket changed/lowered the bandwidth limits for displaying and linking images. So what you see on the web are the highly compressed versions of your images. For Pro users, they will still store your un-compressed images and make them available for you to re-down load, but you are basically just paying for file/picture storage. Anything anyone else can view through links are displayed at a much lower resolution.

[Utheman]

Good article here:

http://www.tested.com/news/feature/3563-the-best-place-to-store-your-jpegs-and-gifs-six-image-hosting-sites-compared/

[ubiquitous]

Quite interesting and thanks, W.

Images off my DSLR are 3456x2304 (usually around the 3MB mark for file size); from there I resize to 800x533 (120KB) and then upload. But what you posted makes some sense as to what I'm seeing...

Thanks for providing that! Much appreciated!

[Ronin]

I keep a large .txt file with all of my ImageShack and Photobucket images tagged and ready for quick cut-n-paste in the forums. Most are under 1024x768.

They WERE fine for years. About 6 months ago ALL my photos on ImageShack experienced a quality loss.

That said, looks like all of these guys are tweaking their compression settings. I even wondered if it was time based-- based on last access or number of hits.

The pisser is, things like tutorials or builds that have been posted look like crap now.

[ubiquitous]

.

[Ephry73]

I have had the same problem. I'm actually using a smaller format to avoid that. I don't have a pro account though

[KB]

I think a big problem may be that these site's are now selling photo hosting so they make the free hosting unattractive to encourage you to buy a plan.

 

 

Ken

[Ronin]

I still feel minus.com is doing the best job in NOT fscking with your posted photos.

[Tonyyammine]

Now I know why some pics of my daughter became grainy.