Are "social media sized" photographs ever web-only images?

[@LeeIveson]

I once did a small shoot for a "friend" who received "mates rates" prices, they only wanted the digitals (web size 2048) as they thought my print prices where way too high. I received a phone call around a month later from the "friend" who was inside a print shop having been told by the staff that the image would not print to a high standard for the print size they wanted. At that point the now angry "friend" handed me over to the staff member who I proceeded to have a chat with, to cut a long story short I never heard from that "friend" again . . . And now I don't do mates rates anymore.

[@b2rad]

That's wild. Can't say I'm shocked, though. Being a designer and photographer, every friend thinks you're a free or cheap outlet. Not literally, but I've encountered it many times throughout the years.

[@vladconstantinminea]

As a guy who prints on large format commercial machines, I can tell you that the problem is not the quantity of pixels, those can be interpolated and with a bit of extra filtering made to look good. The problems come from compression and compression artefacts. Those jpeg squares around the edges, and the reduction in color information. If you blow up a compressed image, you are blowing up the artefacts as well and it looks like crap. So if you are sending a client a preview, send it as a heavily compressed jpeg and he won't be able to use it.

[@bnkakl]

ah cool! is this available in the EXPORT option of LR or PS or both?

[@MaskedCountryGirl]

What would the export settings be in Lightroom to achieve what you’re talking about?

[@vitalijaklimasevska9923]

interested too!

[@pypimages9517]

Hi This option is the "Quality" setting in the export dialog box of both Lightroom and Photoshop, which is a scale from 0 - 100. Reducing this value below 100 means that the resulting JPEG file is physically smaller, and loads faster on your web page than a full size file. Between about 80 - 100 I doubt you'll notice much drop in image quality, but as you go lower than 80 then artefacts start to become much clearer. The additional benefit, as @vladconstantinminea mentioned above, is that it reduces the quality of the image when it is uncompressed again for printing, and those artefacts become even more obvious if upscaling is attempted on the file to print larger than its native size. Exactly what Quality value to use varies from image to image, so you'll need to do a bit of trial and error testing. You're looking for a compromise between what is useable as a preview for the client and something that looks awful when printed much above 6"x4". It may well require a combination of Quality setting together with reducing the number of actual pixels in the digital file. As Jess hints in the video, lots of clients are depressingly tolerant of really bad print quality so it's very hard to recommend a guaranteed way of stopping them from printing things.

[@marion.denise]

Thank you for explaining this to people. I hear "web files" all the time in the photography groups. As an also graphic designer of 15 years, the truth is, we can upsample *almost* anything in sneaky ways. I've spent years, soul-suckingly, prepping other people's awful photos to use in prints, publications, banners, flyers and billboards. Another truth people don't want to hear is, clients can't tell the difference 95% of the time. "But my clients are high end and --" Nope. Sorry, same answer, 95%. To add insult to injury, these examples were all fine art style paper prints. We're not even going to talk about all the different substrate options for printing now and how that affects the final print. Oh, and if you think watermarks stop people... They didn't 10 years ago and I assure you now that ai exists, it's not only cake for me, it's getting there for the general population, too. Is it a bummer because everyone wants to post on socials? Yep. But if you don't want to accept the likely possibility, don't give them out.

[@Jude2408]

This has been very helpful and must watch it again. Also need to get on the mailing list for the magazine as I am a member. I’ve always disliked the conversations in photoshop groups about only giving clients a file that will only print to 8x10 or “web size”. It’s like manipulating the size to force the client to spend more. I’d rather my client have a decent size file and be able to print something they love rather than get a poor quality print and the blame is put on the photographer.

[@MJPawtography]

I personally have stopped offering "social media" images as an option instead I give a complimentary "social file" for any print purchased. That way people have the option to share the image with friends and family or use it on their phones/computers as wallpapers, backgrounds, etc. Do I think people could still print them? Yes. I think it is less likely if they already have purchased a print the won't print it again OR if they do run to their local Walmart or Costco they will see the quality difference in the prints themselves. I do include a different print release for social media files stating that the images are not to be printed, but that only goes so far lol

[@ThatPhotographySpot]

That is a very good move and although we can't physically stop clients printing the files we can do all we can to help prevent them doing so and this is very good steps to doing this 🤓

[@Kirwick]

I haven't done any client work yet, just starting out so I'm curious.. Why would you offer/charge less for web-only images, when the effort you go through taking and editing the photos is exactly the same as for full-res files? Or am I missing something here? 😁

[@josh.andthedogs]

Because if you sell a bad file for less money, the customer can’t print it themselves and instead has to buy your expensive prints. (if they want a print) That’s the premise at least, but as explained in the video it doesn’t work, since clients will be happy with crappy prints too, as long as they didn’t have to pay the extra money for your professional prints.

[@JeffCreates]

It's a difficult one isn't it. If you offer something that people can print from, and they are so inclined, there is no "safe" size as a deterrent, because the people that print from a 1000 pixel image despite you telling them not to will probably blame you anyway. I've seen people proudly showing off their daughter's horse jumping photos online - the full gallery, all emblazoned with "preview only, not for use online". I think it probably should focus us on what our actual offer is. If we're focussed on delivering physical products as our mainstay, then we should also be controlling what the client can actually do, because humans are humans and will do what they think they can get away with - and in that circumstance, no, we shouldn't be offering "web" quality images. For (human) portraits I offer 1024px on the long side as social media sized images. I look at them on my super high resolution phone screen and i do often wonder why people would choose to pay for anything else. Ideally i guess I'd be separating actual usage - if they're images that I want to be used on social media as a form of promotion of my services, then delivering social media images is probably a good idea - otherwise it's probably self-defeating. Trouble is, even in that seemingly controlled circumstance, what is a good promotion? I've had a number of people who have been delivered social media images then go and put multiple filters on them and tag me as the photographer - which is more damaging than beneficial. All in all, a great thing to get us thinking about. I don't have the answer!

[@DigitalImageStudio]

My draft/preview images have a big red banner along the bottom stating Draft/not for publication plus copyright and along the top is my logo, shoot details, file details and other info and still they get used (often cropped). I have a version of the draft profile for problem clients which features the red text across the centre of the image.

[@kevinconnery1974]

Exactly. "Back in the day" (2002-2004) I routinely printed 20x30" portraits and beauty images from a 6 megapixel dSLR, and clients were perfectly happy with the results. Landscapes would show a loss of detail that might be bothersome, but the softening from interpolation/upsampling was just fine for skin. Today's more advanced interpolation methods make enlarging images even more effective than the basic bicubic option back then. Use of high compression rates to make JPEG artifacts a limiting factor will also render the 'web sized' view similarly ugly; it's not really an effective option--and again, modern noise-reduction tools exist to get around that as well. While the concept of a file which could only be used on the web might sound attractive, it hasn't been realistic in a VERY long time.

[@georgiahigh7358]

I absolutely LOVE this as a posed question.

[@daemon1143]

I've had clients take 1200 long side pixel images to pro printers, who do a fabulous job of up scaling and unsharp masking to get a quite acceptable poster print. It usually cost the client more than if they'd just bought the full res image, but for some reason, some people are just like that. Nowadays I don't offer web resolution pricing at all, but I will give a 2048 web resolution versions when they buy their full res image. I set previews to no more than 700 pix on the long side, because you still get the occasional twat who'll take a preview and run, especially from show image sets. Or worse, naff buggers who rip off your previews and put them up as their own.

[@soarpurpose]

might rethink doing some of my images at 1500px on longest side. I was doing under 1000px but felt I wanted a little more detail. Mainly pics of my artworks. When I had some family portraits done, the photographer gave the digital images after purchased a few enlargements. They would end up with so many of them anyway.

[@shirleycove456]

very informative as usual. The sample images definitely drive the premise home. Also Philips article in Tog Talk was brilliant.

[@KarrieEynon]

Hello, have you done a video of how to set up Lightroom to look like yours?x

[@umquart]

Great video, but, file format, jpeg, tif or something else, for best print?

[@soarpurpose]

When I worked as an assistant for a photo-based publishing company years back, they said they made 'low-res' reduced file sizes for the internet. Rational being 1. website loads faster 2. nothing can really be done about any images downloaded (ie theft).

[@w0lfyovi294]

That rational doesn't work anymore because most of the web loading speed is bogged down by ads with auto play videos and multi streams and animations everywhere. As for stealing, well, there's nothing that can be done about that anymore since anyone can AI upscale and Content Aware Fill any logos. Trying to protect yourself against "The Internet" is like going to an interplanetary 31st century war with a toothpick.

[@Kentsj]

I would suggest two simultaneous avenues of protection; watermark with your copyright boldly on the image and sharing the image via Adobe's Lightroom feature where selected images, albums are shared via a web address. When choosing the second be sure to not include "allow downloads".

[@ThatPhotographySpot]

Thank you for the suggestions, the issue with this is that it isn't actually a physical tangible product that is being received which can often be deterring to clients and lose value in the product

[@klausnielsen7111]

I started my business sending out 1024 pixels and 100 dpi, but is now sending 2048 and 100 dpi.... this video has made me think twice about that process, as quite a few doesn't order prints or only a very few copies from their wedding or similar big events. How do you "protect" your images?

[@pypimages9517]

Klaus It's almost impossible to protect images the client has the digital file, sadly. Reducing the Quality setting (to increase file compression) causes degradation of the file contents when it's opened again (uncompression isn't a perfect process) and is probably the single best way of ensuring that any enlarged prints have poor quality. If the client isn't fussy, though (and so many aren't) then the risk is that they'll print it anyway, and now it looks as if the photographer takes poor quality photos! One thing to mention - DPI isn't a setting you can use when exporting a file from LR or PS. DPI (Dots Per Inch) is a printer setting and has absolutely nothing to do with a digital file. We specify PPI (Pixels Per Inch) when we export, but once again that is not a property of a digital file (because a digital file has no concept of distance, such as inches). The actual PPI value that you specify when exporting a file is completely meaningless and has absolutely zero effect on image quality or file size or the number of pixels in the file. You can export a file at 1 PPI and it will have identical properties and quality to a file exported at 300 PPI, and if you print both files at, say, 20" x 16" they will look identical too. This is because they both contain the same number of pixels (your PPI setting during export didn't change that) and so both have the same print resolution if printed with the same dimensions.

[@DigitalImageStudio]

"Web ready" images I deliver at 1024, 1200, or 1600px on the long side (very much dependent on the prior behaviour of the client), and 960px if the image is purely illustrative for my purposes. All my web ready images where the client has only purchased web quality images are delivered watermarked and with instructions on how the work should be attributed and used, if they want clean, printable images they can pay the market rate for clean high res images.

[@alishaandersondesign6453]

You've got the wheels spinning in my head this time. Smart girl!

[@happymystic9800]

Although I am not that much into printing, I find this video super helpful. One question there is, how can I get my hands on a copy of the book you showed in the video? Thank you, have a great weekend …😊

[@ThatPhotographySpot]

Glad you enjoyed the video even though you aren't into printing much 😊 TogTalk is a member benefit as part of our Imaging, Business and Premium Membership which can be found here thattogspot.com/become-a-member/

[@djmacleod-photography]

I've seen someone share a school picture of their child on social media, which would be fine except for the fact that the image was a screenshot, which was literally covered in watermarks. The person sharing it laughed about not paying for a proper picture. It's sad but there will always be people who are prepared to do that kind of thing.

[@Ladybirdsin16mm]

I used to print my old Nikon D50 6mp (3000 x 2000) at 11" x 13" (as big as my printer went), and they were sharp, even under a magnifying glass. Thats straight out of the camera, no sharpening etc

[@andiprimaTFH]

I've seen people print from screenshots, so nothing would surprise me at this point 😂😅

[@oliverracz2686]

A screenshot from a 4k monitor is 3840 pixels wide. More than enough for a good 10 inch print.

[@borderlands6606]

Holiday accommodation is the natural habitat of the small file, big print. I've seen poster sized images from sources measured in hundreds of pixels, a kind of visual Jenga best viewed from the other side of the room.

[@andiprimaTFH]

​@@borderlands6606that's exactly what I mean... I have seen the same 😂

[@gfxmaniac]

And they say A7Siii is not ok camera. With some great lens it is a killer combo.

[@davidclifford9385]

And Topaz Gigapixel. . .

[@harriska2]

Oooh. A good reason for me to never give money to dog activity photographers that only offer web photos for $25 each.

[@ernie5229]

Or you could just stop exploiting the "client." In the end, all you are doing is pushing a button. You already bought all the gear. Why all the greed? Has the demise of capitalist nations not taught you anything?

[@nycaxl]

« All you are doing is pushing a button »? Are you for real ? Did you lose yourself on that channel ? Troll.

[@ernie5229]

@@nycaxl Thanks for the sanck.