Flickr makes my photos unsharp!

[Erik van Straten]

I don't know if this is the right thread to ask if anybody suffers like me from unsharpness of their pictures caused buh Flickr. Watch this:


On my screen this is horrible unsharp:

Also my earlier pictures on Flicker that were originally sharp, are now unsharp.


I don't like this at all!


What is going on? Can anybody help?


Erik.

 

[brbo]

Mine seem sharp to me and I haven't noticed any change in sharpness lately:

https://live.staticflickr.com/7482/26371762993_2e4c3f5b6e_c.jpg

What size do you upload to flickr? I use flickr as a last resort backup so I upload fairly large (mostly 4000px on the longer side).

 

[CharlesDAMorgan]

No idea what's going on, but I thought Flickr was the one place where this sort of thing didn't go on.

That's terribly unsharp.

 

[Brian Legge]

Its an 800x583 image. I have a hard time discerning sharp from not at that resolution with any image.

 

[nickthetasmaniac]

I don't know if this is the right thread to ask if anybody suffers like me from unsharpness of their pictures caused buh Flickr. Watch this:


On my screen this is horrible unsharp:

Also my earlier pictures on Flicker that were originally sharp, are now unsharp.


I don't like this at all!


What is going on? Can anybody help?


Erik.

My Flickr pictures all seem to have their normal level of 'sharp'...

 

[michaelphoto]

Perhaps you have done som +/- resizing. To go back to standard by pushing Control+0. That is the number 0, not the letter.
It worked for me.

 

[pauld111]

Do you think that it might be the browser that you are using might be playing tricks on you and that if you tried viewing in another browser it will be 'normal' again?

 

[joe bosak]

Pretty sure i get this from time to time. I thought maybe it was my old ipad causing the problem (recent photos i uploaded look blurred on it today, and i know the originals weren't). Could they be optimising for viewing device or internet connection?

I finally got an email response from them on getting adverts despite paying for pro status. I could paraphrase it as: "We have been busy doing things with computers. If you still have a problem, go search our help, get back to us if you can't find a solution". Huh - did you even read my email? I wouldn't care if they hadn't claimed to get back to pro users within a day or some such, this was nearly 6 weeks later.

 

[Erik van Straten]

I did not try another browser. When I zoom in on the picture, I can see the grain of the film, so I guess the problem is not the browser (Firefox). It is just the plain image that is unsharp. Very annoying.


There is a lot of complaining on Flickr itself these days about bad performance.


They also aren't visible anymore on RFf, only this link is shown:https://live.staticflickr.com/7915/33612689718_690a51af89_c.jpg



Erik.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

It was like this for sometime. Before Flickr was sold.
If image isn't large, but doesn't fit, I click on it and it is not sharp.
Large images shows more details, but I don't think they are sharp.
Maybe it is my eyes. 🙂

Also, it looks like they outsourced support at same time of useless, if not bad changes some years ago. Maybe they moved to new level now. Similar to ebay, which is run mostly without human now. Just some word recognition algorithms tossing users around, but not solving problems.

 

[willie_901]

This is not a surprise.

Sharpness is not their first priority because the more an image is compressed, the less money they spend on server costs.

 

[Erik van Straten]

I hate it if it stays like this! So happy that I still have a free account!


Erik.

 

[Austintatious]

Do you think that it might be the browser that you are using

This
I can no longer even log in to my flickr account due to not using an "updated" browser for the best experience. I have to use my newer computer to see it. My other is so old it can not be updated any more.

 

[brbo]

They also aren't visible anymore on RFf, only this link is shown:https://live.staticflickr.com/7915/33612689718_690a51af89_c.jpg

That's probably a RFF problem.

Edit: Some RFF subforums obviously do not support embedding pictures.

 

[charjohncarter]

Erik, I agree with you, especially the something is wrong with my older images.

 

[olifaunt]

I don't know if this is the right thread to ask if anybody suffers like me from unsharpness of their pictures caused buh Flickr. Watch this:


On my screen this is horrible unsharp:

Also my earlier pictures on Flicker that were originally sharp, are now unsharp.


I don't like this at all!


What is going on? Can anybody help?


Erik.

The picture at that link is very small-sized. 800x583. On my old desktop monitor HD with visible pixels, not even 4K) it displays as a smallish picture (about 4x6 inches) and the screen pixels seem larger than the detail in the image. Flickr would have to interpolate (i.e., pull in-between pixels out of thin air) to upsize it to fit the much larger pixel dimensions of your iPad (if it is a newer one) and that would naturally introduce a lot of fuzziness. Did you upload it as 800x583?

 

[Erik van Straten]

Did you upload it as 800x583?

Yes, 587 x 800, but I do it like this for many years. I've never had this problem. Not only the pictures that are uploaded to RFf are unsharp, but also in Flickr itself. I load up into Flickr @ 5490 x 3949.


Erik.

 

[sevres_babylone]

Its an 800x583 image. I have a hard time discerning sharp from not at that resolution with any image.

I have posted many photographs on flickr at this size or smaller.

In answer to the OP’s question, yes, I have been noticing a lack of sharpness on some images recently, and yes, what Brian says is a factor more now than before. It seems like flickr, and I guess a lot of other sites, are trying to adjust for different devices — computer monitors, phones, tablets — and there is some kinds of resizing happening.

Yesterday, I was going through some ten year old flickr images to repost on Throwback Thursday on Instagram, and they didn’t look as sharp to me as they used to. Maybe because of the resolution of my iPad Pro, maybe because the ones shot at 1/15 sec were never as sharp as I thought they were, and maybe because my eyesight has deteriorated over those ten years.

 

[p.giannakis]

This is not news for Flickr. I had the same problem back in 2012-2013 with Flickr. That is why I started back then to upload my pics on blogger and post the link from there when I was posting pictures on RFF.
At some point they corrected it and I don't have this problem now. I would imagine that one of the next software updates will sort this out again.

 

[Highway 61]

I just checked this out on my own flickr account. I hadn't logged in for a long while because I'm done with 1,000 photos uploaded so far and I won't pay for their PRO account.

First, no problem to log in (Firefox ESR 52.9.0).

Second, nothing has changed for me when I look at my own photos through my connexion to my flickr account or when I copy the url of the photo (from the BBCode line) then paste it in the same browser url window.

They look the same in both cases and they still look exactly like how they used to at the time I had uploaded them.

Example :

https://live.staticflickr.com/829/42018680902_483786f231_b.jpg

I always upload my photos as light 800x600 pixels files (plus a few pixels in width and length for the white frame out of the "HCB like" black border) weighting just less than 300KB.

So, I guess they don't get re-sized by their new software at this point.

This new unsharp problem some of you are now experiencing might be caused by the original photos dimensions (number of pixels in width and length) and by the data weight of the file once tasked by some new darn filter of some sort they might have set up.

If they have now limited the free accounts to that arbitrary level of "1,000 photos", it might not mean that they don't mind the data weight.