A warning about Photobucket!

[quads]

Photobucket has destroyed the quality of my photos! And it sounds like a permanent policy change. From http://forums.techguy.org/digital-p...ket-dramatically-changing-quality-photos.html

"I noticed that some of the photos on my account have DRAMATICALLY changed in quality. Which is surprising to me because I keep everything under 1MB, and that's what I have it set up for. Now, it isn't every single picture. It's here and there...but it's annoying because I keep a small portfolio on Photobucket, so the details of the photos matter and they're literally so blurry now I can't see any details at all.

I'm no where near the account limit, and all the pictures are uploaded with the same settings and always under 1MB. Some of the pictures that aren't blurry are actually a HIGHER KB than the ones that are blurry. I even deleted the blurry photos, uploaded them fresh with new names, and they looked great. Then I came back an hour or two later and they were freaking blurry again! What the...!?

I noticed this about 2-3 days ago, and figured it had something to do with Photobucket. Maybe an error or something, because I can recall having this happen before...and after a couple hours the pictures looked normal again. But this has lasted for days...and because only some pictures are affected while others aren't...it's really confusing me."

 

[savageactor7]

Yikes that stinks...sorry to hear that quads. We use flickr at http://www.flickr.com/ they give a free 100 pics or so at no charge. We upgraded to 'pro' for a nominal charge and unlimited storage. Hope that doesn't happen to us...at least without proper notice. Anyway check that place out...pretty sure you need a yahoo account to get there.

 

[quads]

Thanks savageactor7! Yes, that does stink. Apparently Photobucket decided to compress everyone's photos to save space, both the free and paid accounts. The compression affects some photos more than others, mostly the images containing dark subjects like astrophotos/night sky, which also happens to be a hobby of mine. From what I have found out so far, Photobucket did not have a backup plan, and cannot reverse the over-compressed images. The most recent images I have uploaded, within the last few days, so far seem unaffected and are still of the quality that I uploaded. Will they stay that way? No meaningful answers from Photobucket staff.

It took me many YEARS to upload 1800 photos to Photobucket. I'm not sure of my course of action now. I have always had good luck with Google, so will start uploading photos to Picasa from this point forward. I'm on a slow dialup connection, so will never be able to upload and replace every image in Photobucket with fresh copies from the originals on my computer.

A quick example.
A ruined Photobucket image:

The way it looked before Photobucket's blunder, now hosted on Picasa:

 

[Highbeam]

Seriously? Maybe my eyes are too compressed to see the difference.

Do you only upload them to the net or do you also keep them on your hard drive or some other storage medium at home?

 

[quads]

No, I always keep the originals on my computer, and backed up. The first picture is blotchy and blurry, you can't see all the details such as the smaller stars. If your monitor gamma is off you might be missing the darker details though. The file size was 100Kb and after Photobucket did their thing it dropped to 24Kb. I guess they did it to everybody, and all pictures posted before August.

 

[savageactor7]

hummmm I've having a hard time noticing the difference too quads...but I believe you. Just a good thing they're still on your hard drive.

On the computer we use zoom browser so everything I've uploaded is still on file here. Hey if you're paying them and they did that without advance notice that not good service imo. Now that they got away with it I'm sure Flicr will do it as well.

 

[quads]

Actually, I think somebody at Photobucket made a mistake. The link to the discussion in my first post above explains more about it.

It's probably that your monitor gamma isn't adjusted properly, otherwise the difference between the two images should be obvious. Most people don't realize how much detail they are missing in their own photos due to improperly adjusted monitor.

To get the most out of viewing digital images on your computer, you should be able to see the difference (at least) between X,Y and Z and ideally A,B and C. If not, you can adjust your monitor's contrast and/or brightness setting. This alters the monitor's perceived gamma. read more at wikipedia.org