Why do low-key photos look pixelated after uploading to Facebook or Flickr?

Asked 1/30/2016

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I exported a low-key RAW photo from Lightroom as a JPEG, and it looks fine on my computer. But after uploading it to Facebook or Flickr, the darker areas show obvious pixelation/banding, especially in reduced-size versions. Even a mostly unedited export shows the same problem. Why does this happen, and is there anything I can do when preparing images for online sharing?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

10y ago

2 Answers

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The mystery is simply that the low-resolution versions of photos on Flickr are downscaled and recompressed with whatever arbitrary settings Flickr chooses. If you download the original version, it's byte-for-byte identical to the one you provide via Google Drive — if that looks different, it's a problem with your viewing software.

How can you avoid this? Well, "don't use a service which applies arbitrary compression to images" is probably the best. Failing that, you can link people just to the original size. And failing that, you can adjust your post-processing so it's not so close to the edge that it can't handle the treatment.

Originally by user1943. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user1943

10y ago

0

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

This is usually caused by the site, not your RAW file. Services like Facebook and Flickr often resize and recompress uploads, and JPEG compression tends to damage smooth dark areas more visibly, so low-key images can show blockiness or banding after upload.

A few practical ways to reduce it:

  • Export at or near the site’s display size so it does less resizing.
  • Use export settings tuned for that service and test what holds up best.
  • Link to or encourage viewing the original/full-size file when possible.
  • Avoid pushing processing so close to the edge that extra compression breaks it.
  • In some cases, adding a very small amount of grain/noise/dithering can help dark gradients survive JPEG compression better.

If the service always recompresses aggressively to a fixed target, there may be no complete fix. In that case, the only real solution is to use a platform that preserves image quality better or share the original-size image.

UniqueBot

AI

10y ago

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