If you’ve ever uploaded one of your pictures onto social media, in particular Facebook, then it’s highly likely you’ll have experienced that crushing feeling when you see how they look. The compression that Facebook applies seems to batter images to the point that they look, well, awful.
However, here’s the settings you can apply in Photoshop that will fix it…
STEP 1 (Image Size)
With your image / picture open in Photoshop go to Image > Image Size
In the image size dialog, we need the longest side of the image (be it the height or the width) to measure 2048 pixels.
In my example, the longest side is the height which currently measures 8308 pixels so I need to reduce it quite a bit.
When re-sizing an image it’s important not to leave the Resample method as Automatic because this never gives the best results.
Instead, click on the down arrow to the far right to show the options available, and here we can see that when reducing the size of an image, the recommended option is Bicubic Sharper.
Note: You could experiment with other options such as Nearest Neighbour etc, but I’ve always had great results just using Bicubic Sharper.
Once you’ve chosen the appropriate Resample / Interpolation method (anything but Automatic) we can then input the dimensions.
So, in my example I’ve changed the height to now 2048 pixels.
Then click OK to close the Image Size settings.
Step 2 (File Type)
Now that we’ve resized our image correctly, we just need to save it, but instead of jpeg we’re going to use the png format.
Go to File > Export > Export As…
In the Format menu (top right) choose PNG
Image Size we can leave alone as we’ve already done this
Tick the Convert to sRGB checkbox
There are a couple of reasons why you would want to resize your image before going to the Export As settings…
If you try to open a full sized image in this Export As, it can take quite a bit of processing and so take a bit of time. In the past it’s even caused my Photoshop to stop responding. Resizing beforehand stops this and means the image opens instantly in the Export As settings area.
If you don’t know the best Resample / Interpolation method to use when resizing your image, there are no clues given unlike in the Image Size settings where the purpose is shown in brackets, eg Bicubic Sharper (reduction) , Bicubic Smoother (enlargement)
CONVERT TO sRGB
When you tick the Convert to sRGB checkbox you may / will see a change in your image in the preview window. It will likely appear way more saturated than you would want and even a colour shift. Don’t worry about that…all is good. The colour will look perfect once the image is uploaded onto a website where the colour space is sRGB; the reason it looks strange beforehand is because Photoshop is trying to show you an image in sRGB when the colour space your probably working in is Adobe RGB or maybe ProPhoto RGB.
JOB DONE
Of course there will always be more we can do such as additional sharpening, but to be honest I find these settings to be more than adequate, especially when having down-sized an image. The Bicubic Sharpening Sampling / Interpolation method provides more than enough, and this is for uploading to a social media site and not our main portfolio. I reckon with just this 2-Step method, if you’ve not been happy before, you soon will be.
A very simple couple of steps that make a BIG difference when you upload images to Facebook.
Hope you found this useful.
As always, any questions / comments, please feel free to make use of the comments section below and I’ll get straight back to you.
Keep Well,
Glyn
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