I have been on a mission to find a way to make my Facebook’s image uploads look good. I have tried everything. Finally, I threw up my hands and I asked my tribe if they knew of ANYTHING a photographer could do to make them look better and then LAHHHH!!!! My friend, Suellen Cook drops me the goods.
I have now been introduced to the world of .JPEGmini… Swoon…
How did I not know about this!!? Suellen Cook, you are my hero! I am face palming – why don’t I ask my tribe more questions like this? They are all brilliant and helpful and of COARSE they will have an answer. I seriously regret not asking sooner! If you don’t already have an artist group you are apart of, then find one. They are a wealth of support and information and your life will be rich with information and inspiration. Don’t shut yourself off to other artists!
Now! What is .JPEGmini? It is a wonderful little software program that will reduce your image size by up to 80% WITHOUT COMPROMISING IMAGE QUALITY. What? Mind blown. I am so excited by this prospect I can’t stand it. I had no idea this program was out there. .JPEGmini has software for both Mac and PC, you get a free trial which allows you to minify up to 20 images a day AND they even have a Lightroom Plugin! Yes! If you like it (and I can’t possibly imagine why you wouldn’t) it’s only 19.99 to purchase! I fell in love with it instantly. As much as our livelihood depends upon our artwork/images looking good online, that 20 bucks is money well spent. This program is going to save me a ton of room on my Dropbox account. I deliver client’s images all the time through Dropbox and I’m always having to swap around folders because I’m only allotted a certain amount of space. This frees up so much space! I’ll never upload an image again without it.
The true test is seeing if this program will handle images with text. Text always has artifacts around them. Here is a Facebook header before I used .JPEGmini
Here is the same Facebook header, cropped to 2048px, run it through .JPEGmini and then uploading to Facebook.
I am now a loyal fan… Here’s the link to check it out!
Take me to the world of JPEGmini!
Of course there are a few other tips you can use along with .JPEGmini, that will ensure your Facebook photos will look their absolute best. Here are some other tips…
1. The largest image Facebook will show is 2048px. If you have a larger sized image, then Facebook’s compression software will chop it down to that size anyway. Therefore, if you go ahead and set your image to the FB size specs, then the compression won’t mess with your image quality nearly as much.
2. I have heard uploading your images as .pngs will ensure your images look better. Honestly, I’ve never had that work for me. It still looks like there are bugs all over my images.
3. Make sure you click the “High quality” setting when uploading the images to Facebook. This was suggested by FB themselves. I’m not sure there is really that big of a difference on this or not. I can’t imaging them being any worse but I keep this box checked on all uploads anyway. 🙂
4. Don’t pre-sharpen them. I have noticed when I sharpen my images before I upload them, the images tend to have more artifacts on them. Facebook’s compression does add a little sharpening, therefore if you sharpen them before you upload they are getting sharpened twice.
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Keep learning and keep #SharingItForward!
Lady Caroline
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