Question about client posting images!!

[Hayden SMASH Vachon]

Hello, I do a lot of concert photography. I keep running into the problem where I will send the clients a high quality jpeg and it looks great when I send it to them. But when they take that JPEG and post it to social media like Facebook is obviously gets compressed and doesn't look as good. Is there anything I can do on my part to assure the best quality image is getting posted? I shoot raw and edit straight from raw. I know some of my friends convert to other files before editing. Maybe that would make a difference. Anyway, any input is appreciated. I am new to the forum and this is my first post. I look forward to joining your community!

 

[Forkie]

Unfortunately not. You can send them the highest quality images possible, but Facebook and/or Instagram will always compress them down. The same happens to my actor headshots when I send them to my clients. The look all shiny and sharp when I send them, then on their Facebook business pages, they look soft.

Unfortunately, there's not an awful lot to be done, as far as I know.

 

[qleak]

Facebook will always mess with the quality. They used to have a high quality upload setting. I've just looked and it doesn't appear to exist anymore.

Maybe by taking the lead on social media you can get a handle on the quality. You post it, or a link to a site with higher quality hosting. Tag the person, make it viewable by everyone.

Even if you upload directly to facebook IQ may also depend on the format you upload. Does a 16bit png uploaded look better or worse than an 8bit jpeg?

 

[gsgary]

Yes, don't send them

 

[tirediron]

Spend a little time determining what the optimum "settings" for facebook are and then send your client two versions; the high-res version and the facebook version. Once you know what the optimal parameters are, it will take you virtually no extra time, and your clients get a "free bonus" as well.

 

[Big Mike]

What I've tried to do, is educate the client. Most people don't realize that you can't just take a large, high resolution image and upload it to FB (or whatever) without some problems.

If they understand the issue and have the ability to 'downsize' the images, they I'll leave them to it. But if they don't, they I will sometimes give them 'for web' versions of their photos. It's pretty easy for me, I just set my Lightroom exports settings to output web-friendly images and give them file name to denote that.

 

[Hayden SMASH Vachon]

Yes, don't send them

Not sure how to respond to that. In your business do you charge people to take photos and then not send them? They pay you and you say, "You don't need to see them, I promise they exist." I could be misunderstanding a simple statement somehow if you want to follow up on it..

 

[Hayden SMASH Vachon]

Spend a little time determining what the optimum "settings" for facebook are and then send your client two versions; the high-res version and the facebook version. Once you know what the optimal parameters are, it will take you virtually no extra time, and your clients get a "free bonus" as well.

Thanks, I will try that!

 

[Hayden SMASH Vachon]

What I've tried to do, is educate the client. Most people don't realize that you can't just take a large, high resolution image and upload it to FB (or whatever) without some problems.

If they understand the issue and have the ability to 'downsize' the images, they I'll leave them to it. But if they don't, they I will sometimes give them 'for web' versions of their photos. It's pretty easy for me, I just set my Lightroom exports settings to output web-friendly images and give them file name to denote that.

Awesome, I do try to inform my clients, but they don't always listen . I didn't know about that export setting, I'll give that a shot!

 

[gsgary]

Yes, don't send them

Not sure how to respond to that. In your business do you charge people to take photos and then not send them? They pay you and you say, "You don't need to see them, I promise they exist." I could be misunderstanding a simple statement somehow if you want to follow up on it..

I wouldn't allow my photos to be posted on Facebook

 

[480sparky38 37]

Yes, don't send them

Not sure how to respond to that. In your business do you charge people to take photos and then not send them? They pay you and you say, "You don't need to see them, I promise they exist." I could be misunderstanding a simple statement somehow if you want to follow up on it..

Not everyone merrily gives their work away on a CD. If that's your business model (full-res files, edited and burned on media to the customer), then you should expect the customer to do with the files as they wish. Once you hand that over, you've lost control of your work.

Some people sell prints instead. And usually with a written agreement about what the customer can (and more importantly) cannot do with them.

 

[pixmedic]

There is of course, the age old debate on prints -vs- files. (or vice versa)
The idea that images on a digital medium are somehow inferior to prints is preposterous, to say the least.
Its no less absurd than saying letters are better than email because they are on paper.
images on CD are simply another way to deliver a product to clients. no more, no less. It gives clients the ability to share photos faster, farther, and with more people than was ever possible with prints.
what you have to consider with offering digital files is this...why do people want digital files?
most commonly, it is to share via email and social media sites. Sometimes its because they dont know what, if any, prints they will want in the future and want to handle it themselves. That's just how it is.

one possible solution, in addition to the regular high res unmarked files, is to provide watermaked images specifically for social media posting so that people seeing the images on facebook or twitter or whatever other sites you kids are using today can see your website address where they can view the high res versions. alternately, but along the same lines, you can ask that they post a link to your website when they post the photos. (a little more work for the client, and less likely to be done on a consistent basis)

other than that, there really isn't much to be done if you want to provide digital pictures.
you could always petition facebook, twitter, etc etc to change how their sites upload and compress the files for web viewing.

 

[vintagesnaps]

Provide appropriately sized photos for social media use. Include in your contracts that those will be provided, and charge accordingly. You need to think about pricing anyway if you're providing a CD or hi res images instead of prints (or both).

You can't control what might be done with images once you give them to someone, but if you make clear that those are sized for social media and will look good on social media sites, it might be more likely they'd be used.

 

[W.Y.Photo]

Facebook will always mess with the quality. They used to have a high quality upload setting. I've just looked and it doesn't appear to exist anymore.

Maybe by taking the lead on social media you can get a handle on the quality. You post it, or a link to a site with higher quality hosting. Tag the person, make it viewable by everyone.

Even if you upload directly to facebook IQ may also depend on the format you upload. Does a 16bit png uploaded look better or worse than an 8bit jpeg?

This is the best suggestion yet.

To go off the old adage: "If you want it done right you gotta do it yourself!!"

 

[Austin Greene]

Hello, I do a lot of concert photography. I keep running into the problem where I will send the clients a high quality jpeg and it looks great when I send it to them. But when they take that JPEG and post it to social media like Facebook is obviously gets compressed and doesn't look as good. Is there anything I can do on my part to assure the best quality image is getting posted? I shoot raw and edit straight from raw. I know some of my friends convert to other files before editing. Maybe that would make a difference. Anyway, any input is appreciated. I am new to the forum and this is my first post. I look forward to joining your community!

I'm not sure if this was addressed, I'm sneaking this reply in while at work, and can't read all the posts. That said, I've do the following for all clients to whom I'm releasing full-res files.

1. Edit them in RAW, export as JPEG at 300dpi into a folder.
2. Use photoshop's image automator, or do it by hand, to resize all the images in the folder to be 1920 on the longest edge. I do this so they can still be used as backgrounds on laptops (such as commissioned landscapes). I then open each image up in photoshop and view it at 100% to make sure these copies look sharp at their new resolutions, if not too sharp. For Facebook, I use slightly smaller resizing options, but the result is the same, nice sharp images on Facebook for folks to look at.

So essentially, I end up sending each client two sets of the images. One labeled for use in social media, and one not-resized batch labeled as the full-res files.