The Facebook Phone, Sheryl Sandberg, the new Facebook Newsfeed, the Facebook Graph Search, Zuckerberg’s FWD.us….holy moly Facebook, do you ever slow down?
Except I know one thing that is really dragging…image upload. Facebook is moving to an even more visual front with the incorporation of their new News Feed with bigger images and videos; however, the past few times that I have tried to upload images to Facebook they have been severely degraded. At first I thought it was my vision, unfortunately my appointment with the eye doctor keeps getting pushed down on my priority list, and alas it wasn’t.
It was all Facebook.
I knew Facebook degraded the image quality, yet, I didn’t know it was that bad until I started uploading TrackMaven branded graphics accompanying links to our blog posts. I furiously started searching on Google for ways to make sure this didn’t happen and I also tried with brute force with the different ways. (Luckily, for my Facebook friends, I hid all of these tests so only I could see them, otherwise they would have been overwhelmed with about 20 pictures of Maven in various forms of quality — you’re welcome.)
To be candid with you all, if you take a look at our Facebook photos you can also see a timeline of the progression to clear Facebook images.
Before, I started my attack on getting TrackMaven’s images to be crisp, I would upload them as jpg’s with my images set in photoshop with a resolution of 72 px. Rookie mistake.
After uploading, the kookiness began. Although I set the images above with those settings, Facebook worked their own madness onto them.
Here are the before and after pictures.
Before:
After:
When I finished creating my image on Photoshop, as mentioned before I saved it as a JPG with the resolution set at 72px. The image was then saved at 111KB.
Now, Facebook does reduce the quality of your images in order to fit their own standards, but I wasn’t expecting it to completely degrade the quality of my image. With the “After” image uploaded to Facebook Notice the difference in the stars and the quality of the purple background? Not cool Facebook, not cool. They also reduced it to a size of 16KB.
The Solution:
Here’s how I cracked Facebook’s images, so I wouldn’t have any more fuzzy graphics.
1. First, make sure you are starting off with a square image. In order for a user on Facebook to see the full image on your timeline, without clicking through, the image must be square. I keep my images at 590×590. Some other branda have smaller sizes, but I’ve keep with this size because while looking at the images uploaded on Obama’s Truth Team Facebook page. Aside from mine and your own political affiliations, this page has stunning visuals and their images are 590×590. However, as long as it’s a square image it should work. Stick to 300×300 and above though.
2. After creating your fantastic image on Photoshop, go to the Image drop-down and select Image Size.
3. From the Image Size, you will be able to change the resolution. Since Facebook clearly reduces the resolution, you want to set it as high as possible. I set the image resolution to 300px.
4. Uncheck constrained proportions, so if you need to edit the size it doesn’t end up all kooky.
5. After setting the image to a resolution of 300px, it will make your image much larger. However, do not fret!
6. Go ahead and click File, Save As and then save the image as a PNG.
7. I have it at the Smallest/Slow Compression and I did not set it for Interlaced.
8. You’re all set to upload the crisp image to Facebook.
EX:
The image started out as 285 KB
And ended with 138 KB, so Facebook reduces the image by about 52%. So setting the image up with a higher resolution ensures that after a Facebook upload it remains fuzz-free.
So in order for you to maintain the crispness, remember that percentage and follow the steps above or below for a quicker version!
Quick Breakdown to Crisp Images:
1. Start off with Square Image
2. Set Resolution at 300 px
3. Uncheck Constrain Proportions
4. Save as PNG
Boom.
Are there other ways to do this? What are some of the ways you tried? Bark at Maven on Twitter (@TrackMavenApp), tweet at me (@sabelharris) or even leave a comment below!
*Note: I’m using Adobe Photoshop CS6
If you liked this post, you might like our MARKETING MAVEN’S GUIDE TO FACEBOOK for insights into the best times to post and best practices for word count, Calls-to-Action, punctuation, and more.