Photo resolution Problems

JohnAllan · 06-23-2010, 08:06 PM

Hi all,

Newbie checking in!!

I'd greatly appreciate if someone could help me solve photo resolution problems/issues I'm currently experiencing. I purchased the K-7 about a month ago and things have been going great and I'm extremely happy with the camera. Although my primary purpose for the camera is for personal use, I also looked forward to utilizing the camera in work applications being that I am a licenced realtor.

Part of my job requires me to take quality photographs of properties that I have listed For Sale. My problem has been in uploading my photos to my brokerage and local real estate board for processing.

I have been taking the photos in jpeg format which is what my board has requested. The pictures have been shot primarily at 10 or 14 million pixels resolution. After taking the pics the photos are brilliant and crystal clear on my camera rear display. However after i send them on to my board for processing or my brokerage, the photos are displayed in very poor quality. Extremely grainy no matter what film speed the pictures were taken at. This is quite frustrating. There probably a simple answer to this. I know that it is possible to upload high quality/resolution images to my board system because I've seen other realtor images of high quality on the system.

I've tried many things to solve the problem with no success. I.E. sending the photos in smaller sizes and at different pixel resolutions. I have been using adobe photoshop starter kit to organize and transfer my images to my local board.

I'm stumped! not sure what to do. I was going to try raw format but I've been told that jpeg is the way to go for real estate processing.

hope someone can enlighten me,

JohnAllan

SpecialK · 06-23-2010, 09:23 PM

I have no idea what "real estate processing" is.

However, your web host may make some unwanted changes, as I'm told Flickr does.

Also, always shoot at maximim size.

You can resize the image in Elements. (Image --> Resize). Check the Constrain proportions and Resample image box which will allow you to choose the dimensions in pixels.

I think "Save for web" file saving is not what you want to do.

photolady95 · 06-23-2010, 11:30 PM

If you shoot RAW you can save as jpeg after you've altered them the way you want them to be. And I agree the maximum size is best.

rkt · 06-24-2010, 01:45 AM

I would first check if there are any conversions done by the website during upload, and if they have a max filesize / dimensions limit ... they may be resizing images automatically ... if you know the threshold then you could resize them yourself while keeping an eye on the final quality, before sending to them ... and have more control on the final quality.

Also, since you are using photoshop ... along with dimensions, you can also specify 'quality' and probably you want to keep the settings high when you export your images after any editing etc ...

Images can look really good online without being at maximum filesizes / resolution and how to down-size the image for web viewing is the key here ... maybe that's what the others are doing.

If you are sending the photos by email (eg Outlook) then there are options to make them 'email friendly' (not what you want, since it resizes them) or send the originals as-is (this is probably what you want)...

Ben_Edict · 06-24-2010, 01:59 AM

Originally posted by JohnAllan

Hi all,

Newbie checking in!!

I'd greatly appreciate if someone could help me solve photo resolution problems/issues I'm currently experiencing. I purchased the K-7 about a month ago and things have been going great and I'm extremely happy with the camera. Although my primary purpose for the camera is for personal use, I also looked forward to utilizing the camera in work applications being that I am a licenced realtor.

Part of my job requires me to take quality photographs of properties that I have listed For Sale. My problem has been in uploading my photos to my brokerage and local real estate board for processing.

I have been taking the photos in jpeg format which is what my board has requested. The pictures have been shot primarily at 10 or 14 million pixels resolution. After taking the pics the photos are brilliant and crystal clear on my camera rear display. However after i send them on to my board for processing or my brokerage, the photos are displayed in very poor quality. Extremely grainy no matter what film speed the pictures were taken at. This is quite frustrating. There probably a simple answer to this. I know that it is possible to upload high quality/resolution images to my board system because I've seen other realtor images of high quality on the system.

I've tried many things to solve the problem with no success. I.E. sending the photos in smaller sizes and at different pixel resolutions. I have been using adobe photoshop starter kit to organize and transfer my images to my local board.

I'm stumped! not sure what to do. I was going to try raw format but I've been told that jpeg is the way to go for real estate processing.

Your problem has nothing to do with the camera. And it won't make a difference whether you use JPGs or RAWs in camera.

The problem is in all probabilty only related to the image hosting website, your real estate site. Often image hosting websites will compress and rescale images, to meet some internal guidelines. You can see the effects (graininess, unwanted artefacts in the images, loss of contrast etc.) even here sometimes.

There is only one solution to get better quality: you need to prepare the images on your pc in a way to meet the website's guidelines, because this will make any automatic changes during upload unnecessary.

So, what you want to do is:

use sRGB as the colour space for your images. You can set this in the K7 menues somewhere, if it isn't already done. This should keep the colours correct after upload.
then,ask the operator of the website about: allowed size of the images given in pixels along its longest side AND about the maximum allowed file size (in kBytes)
scale the images to the maximum allowed file size and apply sharpening after scaling.
After that, adjust the JPG-compression until the resulting file size meets the website requirements. Upload.

This should improve the quality markedly.

Ben

**Rondec** · 06-24-2010, 04:05 AM

What Ben said. Basically, you are better doing your own resizing rather than letting the web site do it for you. Even here (on the amazing Pentax forums), if you upload photos, they get downsized and compressed and the quality shrinks.

Find out the size of file that can be posted and down size yourself to 900 pixels width and that size and see how it works. As Ben said, sharpen at the very end.

Marc Sabatella · 06-24-2010, 12:00 PM

As others have mentioned, this is not a camera issue at all (and nothing to do with JPEG versus RAW), but an issue with the software being used to transfer the photos to the site - either the program you are using at your end to send the pictures, or the software they are using at their end to receive them. One of these two programs - or perhaps both of them - is obvious resizing / compressing the pictures to an unacceptable degree. You need to investigate the options available on the software side to control that process. Trying to resize the pictures before transfer is a good start, but you'd want to be sure you're downsizing to a size that won't need further downsizing at their end, and that you are doing whatever you can to make sure they don't downsize your photo further.

Although I'd also note that a 3" LCD on the back of a camera is not a good way to judge how sharp your pictures are. It's certainly possible they aren't as good as you think they are even before sending them. Unless they also look good viewed on your computer at the same size they end up being viewed on the real estate site.

PinarelloOnly · 06-24-2010, 01:59 PM

First off all good advice above but you should have a minimalist approach when it comes to a business and post processing files.

No one wants to spend more time than they have to for Raw to Jpeg conversion and all
that stuff especially dealing with real estate photos. Most of what you do is all probably on
the fly.

If most of your photos are web photos like I do a lot of, you should try to shoot 2-4MP
and knockem' down in size "in camera" for "screen size photos" THEN get rid of Flikr or
anything else that represents a "photo sharing networking site" and use a a true photo
hosting site like Fototime.

There is no reason to be shooting 10Mp or higher when you are going to re-size (smaller)
and compress the file for a clients computer screen. I myself and my assosiates have
ripped sub-contractors to shreds for emailing us pics of a job site that are huge and
have simply not used them for work (their loss) because they proved themselves computer illiterate.

BTW: I use a MAC MIni and a Mac Book Pro using Photo Preview for any JPEG touch ups.....other than that when you get
good with your camera you'll get to a point where you'll know your settings especially white balance and trust your
decisions for JPEGs and you'll be able to by-pass post processing almost completely out on the road.

tibbitts · 06-24-2010, 03:50 PM

You don't need to get your own hosting site, you just have to contact your hosting service and ask them the questions you've asked here. It's somewhat surprising that much quality would be lost in resizing on their site, but probably they'll know.

If this is a public site, maybe post a link to one of your problem pictures, and some else's non-problem picture?

Paul

**interested_observer** · 06-24-2010, 08:32 PM

I agree with all the excellent advice posted so far. I would only add a few additional items.

If you are just going to post the image to your real estate multiple listing or whatever service, shooting a lower resolution is probably a good idea. I would crop the image to suit your taste first, and this would help in terms of preserving detail on the end product.
On the other hand if you are going to do fliers on a property, I would shoot full resolution, crop and getting it perfect for your flier (image 2), then resize for the real estate site (image 2).
I would possibly trying uploading some images here to this thread to practice and see how they look under the image pixel and file size restrictions here. Also, try the image and file size restrictions from your board here and see how they look.

JohnAllan · 06-25-2010, 08:13 PM

Thank-you to everyone for your sound advice an suggestions. It is greatly appreciated. I haven't had a chance to connect with my Real estate board office regarding my problem but I shall be contact them regarding my issues next week.

However, I found out today from a fellow realtor that i can upload my photos directly to the Board office myself instead of sending them to my Brokerage first for processing. ( I was wondering whether my own brokerage administration personnel were rescaling my photos and causing the problem.) This will effectively eliminate the middle person and reduce chances of photo manipulation and compression.
As everyone has suggested, once I find out what file size format that my Real Board image hosting site uses, hopefully this will resolve my problem. I'm not a computer techie myself, so I may have a few problems rescaling my photos to my boards parameters, but I'll I'll figure it out eventually.

Again, many thanks to everyone for your help and I'll keep you posted as to my progress in solving this issue.

johnallan

noahpurdy · 06-26-2010, 01:20 AM

Instead of all the conjecture can you post some examples of the issues you're having so we know exactly what the issue is?

JohnAllan · 06-26-2010, 07:51 AM

My Board site says that photos are auto-cropped to fit 512 x 384 when uploaded. Now i have to find a way to scale my photos to this size format!.

Also, not sure how to adjust jpeg compression either.

JohnAllan · 06-26-2010, 08:21 AM

Originally posted by noahpurdy

Instead of all the conjecture can you post some examples of the issues you're having so we know exactly what the issue is?

I tried to send an example but it didn't work. Pentax forum error response -"Upload failed- please check the filesize."

It appears my images are very large. The photo I tried to upload to the Pentax forum as an example is 6.47 MB in size and photo dimensions are 4672 x 3104 in jpeg format.

My Board office auto crops photos to fit 512 x 384 dimensions!

sterretje · 06-26-2010, 09:59 AM

All (if I'm not mistaken) photo editing software has the option to resize images. Some viewers have options for resizing as well (e.g. Irfanview). Resize to something where the longest side is around 800 pixels and you should be OK for publishing on the web (in general).

For publishing on the specific site that requires 512 x 384 max, resize the longest side to 512 pixels; the other side will be 341 pixels (so within limits). So you can do that as well and compare your result with the results that you currently have.

06-23-2010, 08:06 PM	#1
JohnAllan Inactive Account Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Ontario Posts: 7	Photo resolution Problems Hi all, Newbie checking in!! I'd greatly appreciate if someone could help me solve photo resolution problems/issues I'm currently experiencing. I purchased the K-7 about a month ago and things have been going great and I'm extremely happy with the camera. Although my primary purpose for the camera is for personal use, I also looked forward to utilizing the camera in work applications being that I am a licenced realtor. Part of my job requires me to take quality photographs of properties that I have listed For Sale. My problem has been in uploading my photos to my brokerage and local real estate board for processing. I have been taking the photos in jpeg format which is what my board has requested. The pictures have been shot primarily at 10 or 14 million pixels resolution. After taking the pics the photos are brilliant and crystal clear on my camera rear display. However after i send them on to my board for processing or my brokerage, the photos are displayed in very poor quality. Extremely grainy no matter what film speed the pictures were taken at. This is quite frustrating. There probably a simple answer to this. I know that it is possible to upload high quality/resolution images to my board system because I've seen other realtor images of high quality on the system. I've tried many things to solve the problem with no success. I.E. sending the photos in smaller sizes and at different pixel resolutions. I have been using adobe photoshop starter kit to organize and transfer my images to my local board. I'm stumped! not sure what to do. I was going to try raw format but I've been told that jpeg is the way to go for real estate processing. hope someone can enlighten me, JohnAllan

06-24-2010, 01:59 AM	#5
Ben_Edict Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: SouthWest "Regio" Photos: Albums Posts: 3,309	Originally posted by JohnAllan Hi all, Newbie checking in!! I'd greatly appreciate if someone could help me solve photo resolution problems/issues I'm currently experiencing. I purchased the K-7 about a month ago and things have been going great and I'm extremely happy with the camera. Although my primary purpose for the camera is for personal use, I also looked forward to utilizing the camera in work applications being that I am a licenced realtor. Part of my job requires me to take quality photographs of properties that I have listed For Sale. My problem has been in uploading my photos to my brokerage and local real estate board for processing. I have been taking the photos in jpeg format which is what my board has requested. The pictures have been shot primarily at 10 or 14 million pixels resolution. After taking the pics the photos are brilliant and crystal clear on my camera rear display. However after i send them on to my board for processing or my brokerage, the photos are displayed in very poor quality. Extremely grainy no matter what film speed the pictures were taken at. This is quite frustrating. There probably a simple answer to this. I know that it is possible to upload high quality/resolution images to my board system because I've seen other realtor images of high quality on the system. I've tried many things to solve the problem with no success. I.E. sending the photos in smaller sizes and at different pixel resolutions. I have been using adobe photoshop starter kit to organize and transfer my images to my local board. I'm stumped! not sure what to do. I was going to try raw format but I've been told that jpeg is the way to go for real estate processing. Your problem has nothing to do with the camera. And it won't make a difference whether you use JPGs or RAWs in camera. The problem is in all probabilty only related to the image hosting website, your real estate site. Often image hosting websites will compress and rescale images, to meet some internal guidelines. You can see the effects (graininess, unwanted artefacts in the images, loss of contrast etc.) even here sometimes. There is only one solution to get better quality: you need to prepare the images on your pc in a way to meet the website's guidelines, because this will make any automatic changes during upload unnecessary. So, what you want to do is: use sRGB as the colour space for your images. You can set this in the K7 menues somewhere, if it isn't already done. This should keep the colours correct after upload. then,ask the operator of the website about: allowed size of the images given in pixels along its longest side AND about the maximum allowed file size (in kBytes) scale the images to the maximum allowed file size and apply sharpening after scaling. After that, adjust the JPG-compression until the resulting file size meets the website requirements. Upload. This should improve the quality markedly. Ben

06-24-2010, 01:59 PM	#8
PinarelloOnly Forum Member Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Shoreline CT Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 86	First off all good advice above but you should have a minimalist approach when it comes to a business and post processing files. No one wants to spend more time than they have to for Raw to Jpeg conversion and all that stuff especially dealing with real estate photos. Most of what you do is all probably on the fly. If most of your photos are web photos like I do a lot of, you should try to shoot 2-4MP and knockem' down in size "in camera" for "screen size photos" THEN get rid of Flikr or anything else that represents a "photo sharing networking site" and use a a true photo hosting site like Fototime. There is no reason to be shooting 10Mp or higher when you are going to re-size (smaller) and compress the file for a clients computer screen. I myself and my assosiates have ripped sub-contractors to shreds for emailing us pics of a job site that are huge and have simply not used them for work (their loss) because they proved themselves computer illiterate. BTW: I use a MAC MIni and a Mac Book Pro using Photo Preview for any JPEG touch ups.....other than that when you get good with your camera you'll get to a point where you'll know your settings especially white balance and trust your decisions for JPEGs and you'll be able to by-pass post processing almost completely out on the road. Last edited by PinarelloOnly; 06-24-2010 at 02:06 PM.

06-24-2010, 08:32 PM	#10
interested_observer Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Tumbleweed, Arizona Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 5,707	I agree with all the excellent advice posted so far. I would only add a few additional items. If you are just going to post the image to your real estate multiple listing or whatever service, shooting a lower resolution is probably a good idea. I would crop the image to suit your taste first, and this would help in terms of preserving detail on the end product. On the other hand if you are going to do fliers on a property, I would shoot full resolution, crop and getting it perfect for your flier (image 2), then resize for the real estate site (image 2). I would possibly trying uploading some images here to this thread to practice and see how they look under the image pixel and file size restrictions here. Also, try the image and file size restrictions from your board here and see how they look.

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06-23-2010, 09:23 PM	#2
SpecialK Pentaxian Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: So California Photos: Gallery Posts: 16,482	I have no idea what "real estate processing" is. However, your web host may make some unwanted changes, as I'm told Flickr does. Also, always shoot at maximim size. You can resize the image in Elements. (Image --> Resize). Check the Constrain proportions and Resample image box which will allow you to choose the dimensions in pixels. I think "Save for web" file saving is not what you want to do.

06-23-2010, 11:30 PM	#3
photolady95 Otis Memorial Pentaxian Join Date: May 2009 Location: Cruising the forum watching his back Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 12,712	If you shoot RAW you can save as jpeg after you've altered them the way you want them to be. And I agree the maximum size is best.

06-24-2010, 01:45 AM	#4
rkt Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Germany Posts: 154	I would first check if there are any conversions done by the website during upload, and if they have a max filesize / dimensions limit ... they may be resizing images automatically ... if you know the threshold then you could resize them yourself while keeping an eye on the final quality, before sending to them ... and have more control on the final quality. Also, since you are using photoshop ... along with dimensions, you can also specify 'quality' and probably you want to keep the settings high when you export your images after any editing etc ... Images can look really good online without being at maximum filesizes / resolution and how to down-size the image for web viewing is the key here ... maybe that's what the others are doing. If you are sending the photos by email (eg Outlook) then there are options to make them 'email friendly' (not what you want, since it resizes them) or send the originals as-is (this is probably what you want)...

06-24-2010, 04:05 AM	#6
Rondec Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Gladys, Virginia Photos: Gallery Posts: 27,666	What Ben said. Basically, you are better doing your own resizing rather than letting the web site do it for you. Even here (on the amazing Pentax forums), if you upload photos, they get downsized and compressed and the quality shrinks. Find out the size of file that can be posted and down size yourself to 900 pixels width and that size and see how it works. As Ben said, sharpen at the very end.

06-24-2010, 12:00 PM	#7
Marc Sabatella Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Denver, CO Photos: Gallery Posts: 10,685	As others have mentioned, this is not a camera issue at all (and nothing to do with JPEG versus RAW), but an issue with the software being used to transfer the photos to the site - either the program you are using at your end to send the pictures, or the software they are using at their end to receive them. One of these two programs - or perhaps both of them - is obvious resizing / compressing the pictures to an unacceptable degree. You need to investigate the options available on the software side to control that process. Trying to resize the pictures before transfer is a good start, but you'd want to be sure you're downsizing to a size that won't need further downsizing at their end, and that you are doing whatever you can to make sure they don't downsize your photo further. Although I'd also note that a 3" LCD on the back of a camera is not a good way to judge how sharp your pictures are. It's certainly possible they aren't as good as you think they are even before sending them. Unless they also look good viewed on your computer at the same size they end up being viewed on the real estate site.

06-24-2010, 03:50 PM	#9
tibbitts Pentaxian Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Oklahoma USA Posts: 2,196	You don't need to get your own hosting site, you just have to contact your hosting service and ask them the questions you've asked here. It's somewhat surprising that much quality would be lost in resizing on their site, but probably they'll know. If this is a public site, maybe post a link to one of your problem pictures, and some else's non-problem picture? Paul

06-25-2010, 08:13 PM	#11
JohnAllan Inactive Account Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Ontario Posts: 7 Original Poster	Thank-you to everyone for your sound advice an suggestions. It is greatly appreciated. I haven't had a chance to connect with my Real estate board office regarding my problem but I shall be contact them regarding my issues next week. However, I found out today from a fellow realtor that i can upload my photos directly to the Board office myself instead of sending them to my Brokerage first for processing. ( I was wondering whether my own brokerage administration personnel were rescaling my photos and causing the problem.) This will effectively eliminate the middle person and reduce chances of photo manipulation and compression. As everyone has suggested, once I find out what file size format that my Real Board image hosting site uses, hopefully this will resolve my problem. I'm not a computer techie myself, so I may have a few problems rescaling my photos to my boards parameters, but I'll I'll figure it out eventually. Again, many thanks to everyone for your help and I'll keep you posted as to my progress in solving this issue. johnallan

06-26-2010, 01:20 AM	#12
noahpurdy Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Posts: 479	Instead of all the conjecture can you post some examples of the issues you're having so we know exactly what the issue is?

06-26-2010, 07:51 AM	#13
JohnAllan Inactive Account Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Ontario Posts: 7 Original Poster	My Board site says that photos are auto-cropped to fit 512 x 384 when uploaded. Now i have to find a way to scale my photos to this size format!. Also, not sure how to adjust jpeg compression either.

06-26-2010, 08:21 AM	#14
JohnAllan Inactive Account Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Ontario Posts: 7 Original Poster	Originally posted by noahpurdy Instead of all the conjecture can you post some examples of the issues you're having so we know exactly what the issue is? I tried to send an example but it didn't work. Pentax forum error response -"Upload failed- please check the filesize." It appears my images are very large. The photo I tried to upload to the Pentax forum as an example is 6.47 MB in size and photo dimensions are 4672 x 3104 in jpeg format. My Board office auto crops photos to fit 512 x 384 dimensions!

06-26-2010, 09:59 AM	#15
sterretje Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Roodepoort, South Africa Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 3,561	All (if I'm not mistaken) photo editing software has the option to resize images. Some viewers have options for resizing as well (e.g. Irfanview). Resize to something where the longest side is around 800 pixels and you should be OK for publishing on the web (in general). For publishing on the specific site that requires 512 x 384 max, resize the longest side to 512 pixels; the other side will be 341 pixels (so within limits). So you can do that as well and compare your result with the results that you currently have.