Image hosting question

[Todd Caswell]

I use photobucket to host my photo's that I share and they never look as good, after they have been on photobucket. Why is this? And is there a better hosting site??

The swan pictures I just posted don't look anything like they do on windows or photoshop.

[eyeguy 54]

I think all the sites loose quality.

[Dbl]

There are plenty of sites that loose little if any quality...but they all require you to pay. The bandwidth on free sites is fairly limited. I don't use and have never used Photobucket but it is a complaint that is constantly heard.

The other equation here is having a color managed work flow. That will usually start with a calibration device for your monitor. Which browser are you using to view your photos? IE is not a color managed browser, Firefox is if it is enabled. What color space are you saving your photos in? sRGB or Adobe 1998? Web browsers recognize sRGB and will give you the most accurate color reproduction. On the other hand shooting your photos in Adobe and converting them to sRGB for web display will give you better results.

As you can see there are a lot of factors that go into how a picture looks in the final output for instance web display. Color management is nearly as important as taking the photo in the first place. A good efficient plan of how you deal with the file from capture to output is very important to getting the best results from your work.

[JohnK]

The image you upload to most free sites will be resized, and just as importantly, re-compressed so they save storage space and bandwidth on the hosting site. Unfortunately both also reduce the quality.

Picasa has recently added an option to retain the original compression ratio, a nice option since the apply something around 70% compression by default. Choosing the option to retain original keeps it up around 98% for me and helps keep the images looking better. It will use 2 or 3 times as much storage space though - everything is a trade off, especially when you're not paying for the service.