Facebook gives back 20% to the photo community! 2


Facebook gives back 20% to the photo community

A few days ago while uploading an image to my Facebook Portfolio I noticed that the size reduction after compression was not as severe as in the past. To see what had changed, I downloaded the image into Photoshop to check it’s size after being run through Facebook’s “NEW” photo algorithm and ,to my amazement,  I immediately found a 20% increase in the size of the image. In the past, photographs would be reduced to a max “long edge” length of 604px but now the image was a whopping 720px.

To test the image quality at the new format and brought the original image back into Photoshop, reduced to 720px, optimized and re-uploaded. Once done I repeated the above and downloaded the new, Facebook converted, image into Photoshop and found it remained 720px on it’s “long edge” and amazingly kept all of it’s optimized detail with absolutely no perceived image degradation!

I tweeted about my accidental find last night and thought that other photographers whom use Facebook to show off their work would benefit by re-optimizing their images with the new Facebook Image Algorithm in mind and resubmitting!

Too me, the extra 116px [ 20% larger ] image size makes all the difference in the world. Things that were to small to be viewable in the past are now absolutely clear with no noticeable artifacting.

3 cheers goes out to Facebook for listening to all of the photographers, graphics designers and creatives whom have ask for larger and clean images!

Now it’s nose to the grind stone to re-optimize all images and re-upload! 🙂

My only question for Facebook or anyone “in the know” would be: “Can we upload replacement optimized 720px images while keeping comments?”

Here is an example of how much 20% actually is in real world term from an actual Facebook image:

alluremm.com - Facebook New Image Size Comparison © 2010 Joseph Cristina

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About Joseph Cristina

I'm a full-time Palm Beach based Professional Photographer with over 18 years experience in both Photography and Graphic / Media Production. Formal training was received from FAU and the Art Institute in the late 80's. I've worked within multiple advertising agencies along with having work published internationally. Allure Multimedia, LLC is my photographic and multimedia studio base in the sunny Palm Beach, FL. The studio's capacities are many from professional photography to advertising design and multimedia presentation ie. (Wedding Photography, Corporate Events, Modeling, Mitzvahs, TV and Internet Advertising Spots) to name a few. In this digital age, the number of part-time photographers has increase 100 fold diluting the industry with what are known as "weekend warriors". This has lend itself to a rise of a cottage industry of amateurs posing as professionals, underbidding and misleading only to then produce mediocre, at best, final production work. Clients coming to us for professional photography or media creation are reassured by our professionalism, impeccable service, and final product provided, they have made the right decision in commissioning our studio.

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2 thoughts on “Facebook gives back 20% to the photo community!

  • Trevor Current

    This is great news for photographers! In addition to increasing the size of photos, Facebook made one other change, they reduced the size of profile photos. I think their reasoning is, most people would prefer larger photos in their albums, but increasing the size would also increase the amount of bandwidth they would need to deliver them. To compensate they reduced the size of profile photos which are delivered many, many more times than a photo in an album. I guess figuring out the ratio of profile photos to album photos that Facebook delivers, it probably worked out to be an even trade on the bandwidth usage.

    I’m not 100% sure but I don’t think you will be able to upload replacement photos and still keep the comments that were attached to them. I think Facebook will just look at it as a new photo.