Flickr makes my photos unsharp!

[Highway 61]

I think that things have improved now, but I can't post pictures on RFf, only the link shows up.

Erik.

It is always better to build links yourself that having them done automatically by an unsteady system. If you type the

BBCode tags yourself left and right of the image url while posting at RFF it will always work.

Example with the photo of mine I used above already :

Link :

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

Direct view in this post:

It's not a hard time to manually type some caption then :

Roma - April 2018 - Nikon S3 - W-Nikkor-C 28mm f/3.5 - HP5+ in D76 1+1.

Giving the RFFers the info that a photo is now hosted by flickr and that they can look at it thanks to the flickr server isn't of some big interest, is it ?

 

[brbo]

See the shots put together on this page: Analog DarkRoom / Printing


posts 978 and 979

Yes, there is a difference in sharpness. Obviously they changed the jpg compression on their side when they started migration to the new infrastructure. The old links are obviously still operational (just replace the live.staticflickr.com with farm1.staticflickr.com in your links) and are of higher quality (sharper, bigger files).

I suspect that, eventually, when the migration is over, this trick won't work any more as they will just redirect farm#.staticflickr.com to live.staticflickr.com and delete the old (sharper) files. The old shared links that we all posted on the web will still display images, but those images will now be lower quality jpgs.

 

[brbo]

It is always better to build links yourself that having them done automatically by an unsteady system. If you type the

BBCode tags yourself left and right of the image url while posting at RFF it will always work.

It wasn't possible to do that before in this thread. Believe me, I tried.

Now it's possible and the "Insert image" button in the BBC composer is now visible (it wasn't before and the

tags were ignored in the posts).

 

[p.giannakis]

Direct view in this post:

By the way, this is awesome.

 

[Erik van Straten]

Yes, great shot, Nicolas! Wonderful. Thank you for your suggestion, but I do not understand a word of it. I've never build links myself, I really don't know how to do it.

I will contact some Dutch people to see if they have these problems too.

Thank you all, everybody, for your input.

Erik.

 

[olifaunt]

This is what I always do! But the full size is bigger than my screen. I am a composition fanatic, so I want to see the whole picture. Therefore I choose 584 x 800 for lanscape and 467 x 640 for portrait.

Erik.

May I ask what you mean when you say you "choose" 584 x 800 for landscape? Any 584 x 800 image will be very blurry when resized to full screen, so what you are saying doesn't really make sense to me. I am pretty sure we are totally talking past each each other.

I upload my images large and Flickr chooses the display size, i.e., Flickr just makes them smaller to fit whichever screen or browser window I'm viewing them on. This is when I click on my image in the photostream. They are displayed very sharp.

My images are bigger than the screen in pixel size but they are not displayed bigger than the screen by Flickr unless I view them from the download links.

Are you not viewing them from your photostream? From your messages you seem to be doing something elxe but I don't understand what that is.

 

[brbo]

@olifaunt, it's about sharing flickr photos online (forums, etc.).

You can't display a photo in RFF forum with a flickr link (https://flic.kr/p/ZoCYFG) like this:

[IMG]https://flic.kr/p/ZoCYFG[/IMG]

It won't be displayed, see...

You have to use direct (static) link to the image. And since such a link can only point to a single size, flickr prepares various sizes of the same picture. Then you can use desired size from the set of pre-resized versions of the photo and display it inline in a forum (RFF is on ancient tech, more modern stuff can chew through dynamic content so more "advanced" stuff can be done on the hosting site), like this:

[IMG]https://live.staticflickr.com/4489/37668513406_ba629afa58_c.jpg[/IMG]

And then it works:

I guess Erik likes to share his photos in 584 x 800 for landscape and 467 x 640, which is very sensible since some people don't have huge resolution screens and that way they can see the image without scrolling left and right, up and down to see the entire picture.

The problem Erik has noticed is that flickr is now, by default, serving static pictures with lower quality, therefore less sharp. For the time, the old pictures are still available, but might not be for much longer.

This is the old, sharper version of the same flickr photo:

[IMG]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/4489/37668513406_ba629afa58_c.jpg[/IMG]

Difference might be less or more noticeable (depending on the photo and the screen you are using), but it definitely is there. If it's not (download both versions from farm1.staticflickr.com and live.staticflickr.com and compare sizes), then it just means that the new flickr owners haven't transitioned your photos to lesser quality yet...

 

[pauld111]

This might be a stupid question but for people that have a gmail / google account isn't it possible to save photos to your gmail / google and then share them from there, thus not having to deal with Flickr? Or does google have some limitations built in of it's own making that option not practical?

 

[brbo]

It won't work for displaying the photos "inline" (directly in the RFF posts).

Before anyone asks, Dropbox won't work either (although it did for some time)...

 

[Highway 61]

Yes, great shot, Nicolas! Wonderful. Thank you for your suggestion, but I do not understand a word of it. I've never build links myself, I really don't know how to do it.

I will contact some Dutch people to see if they have these problems too.

Thank you all, everybody, for your input.

Erik.

Thank you Erik.

brbo has explained the most of it and very clearly.

I will add this : to display a photo hosted at flickr on some other webpages (here on the RFF for instance) the only troublefree method is to copy the image address by using the "share" button at the bottom right of the black background surrounding the photo you are looking at.

Then you chose the size of the photo (if different sizes available) through the size scrolling menu (click on the small black arrow at the right of the displayed size) then click on "BBCode" to get the image address embedded in some BBCode. Then you extract the lone image address off this BBCode line and you are left with the "hard" image address which will now spell like this :

https://live.staticflickr.com/xxx/xxx.jpg

For each different size available of the same image, the image address syntax will be different because the address will link to different files stored on the flickr server harddrives.

Then you can re-use the image address to link to the image, here on the RFF, or elsewhere.

On webpages where you need to use some classic html tags to build your link to the image so that it display right away using a browser, you will have to build the link like this :

<img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/xxx/xxx.jpg">

On webpages which use BBCode (like the RFF), you will have to build the link by replacing the opening tag <img src=" by

You will get used to it, this is not rocket science.

 

[Highway 61]

I just looked at Erik's flickr.

This is true to say that his very nice photos are now displaying as muddy, unsharp images, whatever the size you chose to see them at.

So this seems obvious that flickr have migrated their files from the "farm#" server to the "live#" server and that they have applied a kind of automation which has ruined large size image files and therefore the smaller (and previously sharp) image files the "old" flickr had created from the original uploaded large image file.

My own flick gallery seem to be totally immune from that at this point because I, as written yesterday, always uploaded small image files having been made as 800x600 / 300KB image files with PhotoShop on my own computer.

Looks like you will not want to upload large size image files any longer, because they will be destroyed by the host server to keep them at a low data weight level. Not unlogical afterall : the 1,000 photos limit would make no sense at all if not on par with a data weight limit.

What is unacceptable is that they haven't communicated about this. So if you have a free account you pretty have garbage to deal with only, that is more than clear.

I'd like to know whether people having bought some "PRO" accounts are experiencing the trouble, or not.

 

[brbo]

I will add this : to display a photo hosted at flickr on some other webpages (here on the RFF for instance) the only troublefree method is to copy the image address by using the "share" button at the bottom right of the black background surrounding the photo you are looking at.

Then you chose the size of the photo (if different sizes available) through the size scrolling menu (click on the small black arrow at the right of the displayed size) then click on "BBCode" to get the image address embedded in some BBCode. Then you extract the lone image address off this BBCode line and you are left with the "hard" image address which will now spell like this :

https://live.staticflickr.com/xxx/xxx.jpg

Or you press the 'Download this photo' button, select 'View all sizes', select desired size and right click on the picture to 'Copy the image address'. This will have the added benefit of actually seeing how the selected size works for the photo in question.

 

[pauld111]

From my google account

 

[Highway 61]

Or you press the 'Download this photo' button, select 'View all sizes', select desired size and right click on the picture to 'Copy the image address'. This will have the added benefit of actually seeing how the selected size works for the photo in question.

Yes, that works too, and, yes it is a better approach.

But - what if the gallery owner has disabled the "Download this photo" option ?

Well, not much of a problem : you display the photo at the size you want to see it, then right-click on your mouse with the mouse arrow anywhere in the page, and chose "Display the page sourcecode".

Then you scroll down the sourcecode page for about 2/3 in height and you will suddenly see the image address, which will allow you to either build a link or save the original image on your hardrive.

😎

 

[brbo]

Looks like you will not want to upload large size image files any longer, because they will be destroyed by the host server to keep them at a low data weight level. Not unlogical afterall : the 1,000 photos limit would make no sense at all if not on par with a data weight limit.

What is unacceptable is that they haven't communicated about this. So if you have a free account you pretty have garbage to deal with only, that is more than clear.

I'd like to know whether people having bought some "PRO" accounts are experiencing the trouble, or not.

I made a mistake with going for the "pro" account, so I can confirm that even the pro accounts are affected by reduced quality of downsized versions of the images. The originals are the same on "live.*" and "farm#.*" locations.

I was very sceptical from the beginning of the SmugMug acquisition of flickr. Unfortunately, it's worse than I imagined.

 

[Highway 61]

I made a mistake with going for the "pro" account, so I can confirm that even the pro accounts are affected by reduced quality of downsized versions of the images. The originals are the same on "live.*" and "farm#.*" locations.

I was very sceptical from the beginning of the SmugMug acquisition of flickr. Unfortunately, it's worse than I imagined.

Not surprising, but not pleasant nonetheless.

So far I can confirm that my free account isn't affected by the reduced quality of the visible online or hosted photos. The small size and weight of my original uploads have been - by chance - a safe medicine :

Mah-jong players at the Chinatown Branch Public Library, Chicago - October 2018 - Nikon S3 - Nikkor-H-C 50mm f/2 - Fuji Neopan 400 - D76 1+1.

Not the sharpest photo ever (shot through a closed window) but the photo hosted at flickr still looks 100% identical to the one stored on my computer.

Let's hope that the new flickr owners aren't big fans of the "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept" sentence. At this point I'd rather bet they don't even know who is said to have pronounced it and who is that historical character whose full name is made of three capital letters... 😛

 

[olifaunt]

@olifaunt, it's about sharing flickr photos online (forums, etc.).

You can't display a photo in RFF forum with a flickr link (https://flic.kr/p/ZoCYFG) like this:

[IMG]https://flic.kr/p/ZoCYFG[/IMG]

It won't be displayed, see...

You have to use direct (static) link to the image. And since such a link can only point to a single size, flickr prepares various sizes of the same picture. Then you can use desired size from the set of pre-resized versions of the photo and display it inline in a forum (RFF is on ancient tech, more modern stuff can chew through dynamic content so more "advanced" stuff can be done on the hosting site), like this:

[IMG]https://live.staticflickr.com/4489/37668513406_ba629afa58_c.jpg[/IMG]

And then it works:

I guess Erik likes to share his photos in 584 x 800 for landscape and 467 x 640, which is very sensible since some people don't have huge resolution screens and that way they can see the image without scrolling left and right, up and down to see the entire picture.

The problem Erik has noticed is that flickr is now, by default, serving static pictures with lower quality, therefore less sharp. For the time, the old pictures are still available, but might not be for much longer.

This is the old, sharper version of the same flickr photo:

[IMG]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/4489/37668513406_ba629afa58_c.jpg[/IMG]

Difference might be less or more noticeable (depending on the photo and the screen you are using), but it definitely is there. If it's not (download both versions from farm1.staticflickr.com and live.staticflickr.com and compare sizes), then it just means that the new flickr owners haven't transitioned your photos to lesser quality yet...

The two images you posted look exactly the same on my browser screen as of this moment.

 

[brbo]

From my google account

Yes, but is there a clear and clean way to do get this link in Google drive (I can't find it)?

 

[olifaunt]

I made a mistake with going for the "pro" account, so I can confirm that even the pro accounts are affected by reduced quality of downsized versions of the images. The originals are the same on "live.*" and "farm#.*" locations.

My live images are displayed sharp. If I go to "view all sizes," the downsized versions seem blurry but I think it may be in part because Flickr is erroneously displaying them in the browser at a much larger size than their pixel dimensions. In other words, the Flickr webpage code is somehow telling the browser to stretch them to (what seems like) about double their pixel size, or maybe it is a Firefox issue. The large 1600 does look better than the smaller sizes though.

 

[brbo]

The two images you posted look exactly the same on my browser screen as of this moment.

Yes, I believe you. My first response to the OP was the same (I was looking at the photos on my work computer). There IS a difference, though. Even if only visible to people with good eyes and on better screens.

flickr is probably thinking along the same lines, 99% of our users won't notice a difference. Obviously not good for OP. And I agree with him.

My live images are displayed sharp. If I go to "view all sizes," the downsized versions seem blurry but I think it is because Flickr is erroneously displaying them in the browser at a much larger size than their pixel dimensions. In other words, the Flickr webpage code is somehow telling the browser to stretch them to (what seems like) about double their pixel size.

Did you miss that I've shown here that there are now two versions of every size of a flickr photo? And that one (the new) is of lower quality? No need to speculate what your browser might or might not be doing (btw, in the 'View all sizes' it isn't doing anything, it wont fit any selected picture size to the size of your browser window).