Uploading VKontakte photos without quality loss. Uploading large VKontakte photos in high quality

We all know that "contact" spoils the quality of posted photos. If this is not so noticeable in the photos from the “soap box”, then for photographers who have spent a lot of time and effort on processing photos, the difference is obvious. A colorful and bright photo fades after adding a “contact” to an album. The work turns from a masterpiece into an ordinary “photo”, of which there are millions. We use Photoshop to process the images.

resizing

The photo in the "contact" when viewed is not stretched more than 1000 px in width. Let's take this value as the maximum width/height size. But with a decrease in size, the quality deteriorates, the photo is “blurred”. In order to minimize the negative effect, we use the following algorithm:

1. Go to the window for changing the image (Image -> Image size)
2. Resize the photo to one and a half from the desired one (1500px on the larger side)
3. Select Interpolation "Bicubic, sharper" and save
4. Go back to the image editing window
5. Resize the photo to the desired size (1000px on the larger side)
6. Select Interpolation "Bicubic" and save

Save it right!

If you save as standard, via "File -> Save As", then a lot of unnecessary information will be saved with the photo. This will increase the size of the photo. Such a photo will display well on a local computer, but not on the Internet. In order to save a photo for the Internet, follow these steps:

1. Go to the window for saving the image for the web (File -> Save for web and devices)
2. Choosing the JPEG format
3. Quality 80
4. Check the box "Convert to sRGB" and save

Using this algorithm, our photos will not lose their quality when posted on the "contact" social network. All great photos!

P.S. If this method helped you, tell your friends about it on social networks. networks using the buttons below.

Tell your friends:

Uploading large high quality photos of VKontakte | Photo lessons and photo processing

To date, social network VKontakte is the most visited website in Russia, and is also included in the TOP of the most popular resources in countries such as Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. More and more young people are registering in the largest social network of the CIS and are gradually mastering the technologies of this powerful portal.

One of the main functions of VKontakte is the uploading of photos, which is used by most of the members of this network. In this article, I would like to pay attention to how to properly upload large VKontakte photos so that they do not lose quality, but become even better than the original image. Interested? Read more…

No quality loss

Most people have already learned the various features of this social network, for example, almost everyone already knows how to download music in contact, “pull out” a video in HD quality, or send various types of files in messages to friends. But the main problem For most people, there was and remains one thing - not properly optimizing their photos before uploading. Users make elementary mistakes, due to which their photos lose quality, become less clear, blur the picture, and also do not pay attention to banal color correction, which would help them significantly improve the quality of their photos.

What should be done to avoid this? Need to follow simple steps:

1. Never upload an original image

Owners of newer DSLRs and modern smartphones have photo resolutions of approximately 12+ megapixels, which means their photos are approximately 4928 by 3264 pixels. But not many people know that the maximum allowable size of a VKontakte photo is 1280 pixels in width and 1024 in height. Accordingly, if you upload the original image to your album, then its quality may deteriorate significantly due to the fact that Vkontakte will reduce it to the right sizes. Because of this, distortions appear in the pictures that are visible to the naked eye.

Consider an example of such a photograph. Below you see a photo whose size is 2585×1929. Pay attention to the distortions that appeared on the girl's legs (click to enlarge):

And now, consider the option with the same photo, only reduced in the photo editor manually:

The difference is immediately visible, right? Therefore, always try to reduce your photos before uploading to your photo albums, not only on VKontakte, but also on other social networks, because. There is a size limit almost everywhere, and every time your photos will be compressed by site scripts.

2. Always sharpen your image

Absolutely always, when you reduce your image, it loses sharpness and becomes less quality. There is a so-called "blurring" of the image. To avoid this, after resizing the image, always add Sharpness (Sharpness, sharpness), thanks to this, your photos will remain as clear, sharp, clean as they were before resizing (reducing).

3. Do color correction

Try not to be lazy and process each photo before uploading. Elementary color correction will add saturation and a fresher look to your pictures. It doesn't take long and the results are phenomenal. Consider an example regular photo uploaded to the social network VKontakte:

And now, pay attention to the picture below, to which all the above recommendations have been applied: reduction in size, increase in sharpness, color correction:

As can be seen from the example, the photograph has acquired a completely the new kind, and is perceived in a completely different way. In order to learn how to properly reduce and sharpen your photos, we recommend our article called How to reduce the size of a photo and increase sharpness, and you can find a simple color correction lesson in our article Color Correction in Color Efex Pro.

If you have any questions after reading this article, we will be happy to answer them in the comments to this article!

P.S. Do you visit our miniblog? IN Lately, we have a lot interesting articles such as Fall Photography Secrets, 5 Beginning Photographer Mistakes, Bringing Your Camera Through the Airport, and 7 Things You Forgot to Do When Buying Your First DSLR. © Phototricks.ru

phototricks.ru

"Contact ruins pictures!" or How to squeeze pictures under a contact without losing quality.

How many times have I heard this phrase from photographers and not only - “Contact spoils the pictures! Look at the print, not the screen!” There is, of course, a sense in this statement, but it is also not worth stating this categorically.

So, the task: How to squeeze photos under a contact without losing quality?

There are 2 main mistakes people make:

1) Upload pictures too much big size and provide its reduction to the contact algorithm. 2) Use color space, other than sRGB

Let's analyze the algorithm for clamping photos in Photoshop "under the contact", in which we take into account both of these factors.

--------------------

The optimal size at the moment, which is comfortable for a person to look at, and which does not suffer so much from clamping, is 1000 points along the long side. Clamping is carried out in 2 stages.

Select Image, Image Size

We set one and a half size from the one we want to get, and select the Bicubic reduction algorithm, more clearly. This will increase the sharpness of the picture, but redundantly.

We get rid of the “oversharp” in the second step - set the final size, in this case it is 1000 points, and select the Bicubic reduction algorithm, for smooth gradients.

The next step is to save the photo to disk.

We select the JPEG file format, the quality is within 75-85. Be sure to check the box Convert to sRGB.

This must be done so that if you work, for example, in the Adobe RGB color space, and ordinary people they haven’t even heard such a word, then in this case, they will see exactly the same picture on their screen as you do.

Everything. Upload to contact. We leave the “Enhance photo clarity” box.

westkis.com

How to upload photos to social networks

When uploading profile photos on Facebook, they are cropped to a square, so it's best to use an image that already has the correct aspect ratio. The photo is displayed on the page with dimensions of 160x160 pixels, but you must upload a picture of at least 180x180 pixels. Therefore, open the photo in an editor available to you and set the dimensions to 180x180 pixels.

The dimensions of a Facebook cover photo are 851x315 pixels, while the minimum required size is 399x150 pixels. It is worth considering that such a small picture will stretch and look terrible, so select the appropriate photo and crop it correctly.

If you're planning to make both the profile picture and the cover picture look like one, keep in mind that the profile picture is 23 pixels to the right of the left edge of the cover and 210 pixels below the top of the cover.

There are many web services that allow you to make original covers for your Facebook page.

Pic Scatter allows you to create a collage of photos to use as a cover. You can choose to generate it randomly or choose a specific album.

Profile Picture Maker's Timeline Cover Banner is a pretty handy custom cover tool with lots of editing features.

Face It Pages- free service allows you to upload your pictures, “play with fonts” and even add links to other social networks to the cover.

Facebook supports uploading JPG, GIF, and PNG formats. JPEG is typically used when uploading mixed-tone images (photos and drawings), while PNG is better suited for graphics, text compositions, and logos. However, Facebook converts all uploaded images to JPG.

To make photos load faster on the page, social network developers advise using JPG files in the sRGB color space. The recommended dimensions for uploading photos to the album are 600x400 pixels. When resizing in the photo editor, set the resolution (DPI) to 72.

2Twitter

Twitter displays profile photos quite small, so it's important to choose an image that looks good in the thumbnail. Twitter crops the photo with a square, so it's best to scale it properly before uploading. While the maximum file size for a Twitter avatar is 2MB, a profile image will display a 73x73 pixel image, and a tweet even smaller at 48x48 pixels.

The image that is used as the cover image on Twitter has a recommended scale of 1200x600 pixels, and the file size is limited to 5 megabytes. Keep in mind that your Twitter name, nickname, biography, location, and URL will appear on top of the cover image, so choose an image that shows the text well.

To make the perfect cover to match your profile photo, you can use a dedicated web tool like this one.

3"VKontakte"

A VKontakte profile picture should have a maximum size of 200 pixels wide by 500 pixels tall (previously it was possible to upload an image up to 700 pixels tall) and a minimum size of 200x200 pixels. When choosing a suitable photo, make sure that it looks good in the thumbnail that will be displayed next to the posts left on your behalf.

When uploading pictures to albums, you do not need to upload images of the original size and trust the VKontakte algorithm to reduce them. It's best to save a photo with a maximum of 1000 pixels wide (for horizontal) or 700 pixels high (for vertical). At the same time, they will be displayed quite large on monitors 1280x1024 and higher with optimal sharpness, which can also be adjusted. True, on 1024x768 monitors, such pictures will decrease and lose clarity.

“We upload photos not with 100% quality, but with compression. Whatever coefficient we use, artifacts in photographs can always be found, ”VKontakte technical support writes. For optimal clarity, social network experts recommend sharpening after resizing the image, and not before.

To upload large images that would be displayed in the entire window on any monitors, before uploading, it is worth slightly sharpening them in a photo editor, which partly compensates for the blurring when scaling the image. The maximum size of the uploaded photo can be 2560x2048 pixels.

When saved in JPG format, the current rendering profile is added. And when scaling the image, this profile is replaced by the standard sRGB, without any conversion. Therefore, before uploading to the social network, it is better to save the picture in sRGB. To do this, open the image in Photoshop, select "Save for WEB" (Alt + Shift + Ctrl + S), in the quality settings window that appears, be sure to check "Convert to sRGB"

There are two main questions for VKontakte photo hosting: what image size will the uploaded photos have and what quality will they be. A week ago, I wrote about the size of photos uploaded by VKontakte, that there are two ways through Explorer and Drag & Drop. Otherwise, these methods are called loading via flash and HTML5. To receive in their albums big photos, you need to use the second method. After that, I carefully studied the posts about the VKontakte photo uploader in order to approach the second question: quality or image compression algorithm. I publish the second material on my website, due to the demonstration of original and compressed different ways photos.

First, you need to determine the moment at which resolution the user views photos most often. Most monitors on the long side have 1280 points, the statistics can be raised, it will confirm this. Using the browser in full-window mode, the user will receive an output image with a long side of 1050-1060 pixels, depending on the program. To achieve maximum quality from VKontakte in conjunction with any browser, it does not make sense to upload images bigger size, otherwise the photos will be compressed by VKontakte or browser script. The task is to achieve a minimum of operations on images from the VKontakte processor, the photographer must control the size of the output image and the sharpening parameters.

Secondly, the VKontakte photo processor works with sequential or sequential JPEG, when the image is encoded block by block from left to right and from top to bottom. Progressive JPEG VKontakte does not support.

Now I'll tell you about the experiments that I did with the image. I took a photo of the main building of Moscow State University, overlaid the copyright with a red heart, this color matters. The image was saved with 100% quality, saved a copy of it with increased sharpness and 100% quality. All operations can be read from the name of the original files.

Uploaded photos VKontakte. Flash or HTML5 method doesn't matter as long as we don't go beyond 1280 px on the long side, the compression quality is the same. The first photo is the original uploaded via flash, then HTML5, the third photo is sharpened.

The Live community Q&A provides excerpts from a dialogue with VKontakte support stating that the VKontakte image processor compresses by 20%. This is not so, according to my conservative estimates, from 40% or more. To demonstrate my statement, there are two files, original and sharpened, saved in Photoshop via Save for WEB with a quality of 60. Only with a decrease in quality by 40%, I received files of similar size. The VKontakte image compression algorithm is not described anywhere.

The last stage, the most interesting one, is the comparison of images. To compare two images, I used the Difference mode. Two identical images in the Difference blend mode will give black box. It makes no sense to compare the original with 60% quality and the file from VKontakte, there is a difference, but there is no reference point for image quality. Examples of comparing the original 100% and 60%, then the original 100% and compressed by the VKontakte processor. As you can see in the image, there is a difference, but it is not significant. In order to visually assess the deterioration in image quality, the contrast is forced to increase by 8 times, the bright point of the contrast curve is shifted by 224 points.

The difference between 100% original and 60% preservation quality.

The difference between the original 100% and VKontakte handler. The second image has a lot more artifacts, less detail and less sharpening.

Sharpened original 100% and after VKontakte handler. The situation is similar to the previous picture. There is a difference in the quality of the images, but it can only be revealed when the problem is artificially enhanced.

By and large, the VKontakte handler has one drawback - it does not work well with uniform colors, especially with red. I asked at the beginning to pay attention to the red heart on the copyright, it is almost uniformly red. In the photos uploaded by VKontakte, there are a maximum of artifacts in this section of the image. From my experience of shooting, processing photos and publishing VKontakte, I can say that I constantly observe this in concert photographs with red, blue, green light spotlights. Also, VKontakte does not work well with color gradients, such photos come in stripes. The main thing is to know these shortcomings of the VKontakte handler so that the published photos look to be of high quality.

The last selection of images to demonstrate acceptable quality, issued by the VKontakte photo processor. On the left is the original 100% image, on the right after uploading VKontakte.

On the left is the sharpened original image with 100% preservation quality, on the right is uploaded by VKontakte.

Output. How to upload high quality VKontakte photos? We determine the size of the image, sharpen the reduced image, save it in Photoshop with maximum quality settings, upload it to VKontakte. If we want to save an image on a social network with a size from 1280 to 2560, we use the Drag&Drop method when uploading.

Together with the application to restore the page, VKontakte requires you to send your photo against the background of the page with the application. It happens that VKontakte does not accept this photo. How to take a photo to be accepted?

What is needed? What should be the photo?

You need to take a good quality photo where you can see your face next to the screen and the application on the screen, which you are arranging. The support service will compare your face with the face in the photos on the page you want to restore (if there are photos on the page, at least one!) and make sure that the request for restoration is made by real owner pages, not the attacker. And the application on the background is needed so that the attacker cannot take any of your photos and send them on your behalf. Now you understand that such requirements are necessary for the security of your own page.

How to take a photo?

You need to make your photo portrait against the background of the monitor (screen), so that your face and application on the screen can be clearly seen. The photo should be clear (in focus), the lighting should be good (the face should not be in shadow). We advise you to use the horizontal photo format (landscape orientation). It will be more convenient if you ask someone to help you. If you use VK only from your phone and you don’t have a computer, laptop or tablet, you will have to find one of these. In addition, it is recommended to send an application from a computer. Many people have problems with their phone.

Some people get confused - they think that they need to take a picture against the background of their VK page, which needs to be restored. This is not true. It is necessary to take a picture against the background of the page with the application that you fill out and where you are going to attach this photo.

Why doesn't VKontakte accept photos?

VKontakte checks the quality of your photo and does not approve the application if the photo is not of sufficient quality. Or the application is simply not sent if the photo is bad. The problem can be solved. You only need to understand that taking a good photo is your personal concern. It is useless to cry in support and ask for something. You must solve your own problem. I'll have to take a photo again and send again.

Advice: don't argue with support about the quality of your photo. It is not for you to decide what quality is sufficient and what is not. You yourself got into such a situation that you have to send a photo to restore access to the page, so follow the requirements.

Now specific solutions for different situations:

The background photo is too dark

Too dark photo

VK writes: "The photo against the background of the application is too dark, try taking a photo in a well-lit room, use a flash or lower the screen brightness." How to fix?

• Make the light in the room brighter, turn on another light source, direct the light on the face ( table lamp, floor lamp, etc.) and take a photo again.
• If you are photographing in the evening, try to do it in the morning or afternoon, when the room is light.
• Try to make the screen darker (reduce brightness).
• You can not take pictures in front of the window, in front of the lamp. Light sources should be behind cameras or side, but not in the frame.
• If the phone automatically adjusts the brightness so that the screen is very light and the face is very dark, try adjusting the brightness. You can tap on a dark place on the screen, such as a face, a wall, a shadow, to adjust the brightness balance.
• Try turning on the flash on your phone (camera). But if it is reflected on the screen, it will be worse.
• If you have a tablet, try to open the creation of an application on it and go outside with it during the day to take a photo.

The main secret: make the room as bright as possible. Take pictures during the day. Add even more light. Turn on the chandelier. Bring the lamps and point them at you. But there should be no light sources in the frame (except for the screen with the application).

Image quality is too low

VK writes: "You are trying to upload an image that is too low quality. Please attach a higher resolution photo. What to do? There is a requirement: the photo must be the size at least 1300 pixels(dots) horizontally. It is not at all necessary to look for another phone with a better camera or camera. Majority modern phones can take such a photo without problems. We advise you to use the horizontal photo format (landscape orientation) when shooting, when the long side is horizontal.

Perhaps it's the camera settings, if for some reason it takes a low-resolution photo. Say, you have 18 megapixels, the photos are excellent, why don't you like it? Or maybe you once chose in the camera settings low quality, as on the most deshman phone. If you look at photos only on a small screen, then there is no difference for you. Set your camera to the highest quality or ask someone to figure it out. If all else fails, ask a friend good phone take a picture of you.

How to find out the size of a photo on a computer?

1. Open the folder where the photo is stored.
2. Click on the photo with the left mouse button once (select this photo).
3. The size will be shown at the bottom of the window. For example, 960x720 is not enough, but 1300x1000 is enough.

Advice: if all else fails, invite one of your friends over to help take a photo. Actually, it's easy. Good photo can be done with almost any phone with sufficient lighting.

Photo is fuzzy (out of focus)

If the photo is not sharp enough (the face or screen with the application turned out to be fuzzy, out of focus or blurry), then it will not be accepted. On the phone, you can focus the image by pressing your finger on the screen where you want to focus - on the face or on the screen. The distance from the head to the screen should be small. The camera focuses when you press the shutter button not all the way (halfway). And if the focus is not automatic, but manual, then you need to turn the ring on the lens.

And if the photo is blurry and you can’t make it clear, then the room is too dark. Make sure the lighting is good.

Photo grainy, poor quality

Most often, the photo turns out grainy when there is not enough light. To fix this, use the same tips we already gave: make the light in the room brighter, bring another lamp, direct the light on the face. If you are photographed in dark time days, wait until morning or noon, when the room will be lighter.

The photo is not uploading or uploading, an error occurs

So, you have problems with your browser (the program through which you access the VKontakte website) or computer, Internet connection, and the like. Try clearing temporary files (cache and cookies) or install another browser and send a request with a photo through it. If all else fails, the photo file is not added, find another computer (laptop) or invite a computer wizard.

If you're trying to upload a photo for an application from your phone, then don't try. Many people have problems with this. For example, you press the button "Select a file" and nothing happens. There is only one solution to the problem: find a computer or laptop and create an application from it, through the full version of the VKontakte website.

The page I want to restore does not contain my photos

Then it makes no sense to send your photo against the background of the application - your application will be rejected. Why? Explanation here: The request to restore the VKontakte page was rejected. What to do? The only exception is if the photos on the page were, but deleted by the person who hacked it (read there).

Vkontakte quite spoils the quality of uploaded photos. In some cases, this is especially noticeable (for example, when loading a very large image). I even posted examples how some of the photos were corrupted. Perhaps this is not noticeable to some users, but the trained eye of a wedding photographer, or just an attentive person, sees two different photos. So, how to deal with it? Until recently, I just changed the size of the photo, however, from time to time I still noticed, albeit not so significant, but still a deterioration in the quality of the photo. After reading about this problem on the Internet, I learned interesting technique, which (slightly improved) I will share with you.

So we have a big beautiful photo. I’ll make a reservation right away, I’m writing only for those who have Photoshop - I wasn’t interested in how to do similar operations in other editors, but the principle should be the same. How can we put this photo in contact so that the straight lines do not become jagged, and the colors remain as we see them? In short, there are three points here:

1) Strongly increase the sharpness of the photo. In full size, the photo should even become too sharp, oversharpened, but after reducing the sharpness will return to normal.

2) In a cunning way, we reduce the size of the photo to the one that the contact loves (1024 in height for vertical photos, and 1280 in width for horizontal ones).

3) We save in a no less tricky way, so that the photo does not contain unnecessary information, is in the sRGB color space and is of optimal quality.

Now more. For example, I took my photo from a beautiful lovestory photo shoot in an abandoned manor.

1. Open the photo in Photoshop.

2. Create a duplicate layer, apply a filter to it - other - colour contrast with a radius of about 3 pixels. Then set the layer to "Overlay" mode and flatten. Thus, we have increased the sharpness of the photo.

3. Select Image -> image size.

4. We exhibit: For horizontal images - width 1920, for vertical- height 1536 (dimensions one and a half times the final ones), resampling - Bicubic, with a decrease (in other versions of Photoshop - Bicubic, clearer), apply.

5. Select Image -> image size.

6. We exhibit: For horizontal images - width 1280, for vertical- height 1024, resampling - Bicubic, smooth gradients (in other versions of Photoshop - Bicubic, best for smooth gradients), apply.

The resulting file and upload it to the contact. As a result, quality loss will be minimal and colors will match what you see on your monitor. I think that this technique is suitable not only for VKontakte, but also for other social networks, and just transferring files over the Internet, because as a result you get an image of optimal weight, size and clarity, which will be equally displayed in any color space (t .e on any computer).

P.S. Here is what VKontakte support writes about this:

The quality of photos deteriorates when uploading, what should I do?

To minimize visual quality loss, it is better to upload smaller images (up to 1000 pixels on either side) and slightly sharpen them before uploading. In addition, it is better not to click on the “Add new photos” line, but to drag a picture onto it directly from the computer folder.

There is one more important detail: our loader does not like color profile Adobe RGB, so it's best to convert the image for Web before uploading. The algorithm of actions is as follows: in Photoshop, you need to select "Save for WEB" (Alt + Shift + Ctrl + S), then edit the quality settings and be sure to check "Convert to sRGB".

The most valuable pictures should be uploaded to the documents section -

The largest social network Vkontakte has never spoiled photographers. And yet, many and many of us post our pictures there, because the audience of Contact is truly huge. Everything is there: friends, acquaintances, colleagues, clients. In addition, Contact is progressing rapidly, and if earlier photos were limited to tiny (604 by 480) sizes and terrible compression, now there is much less loss in compression, and photos are shown in almost the entire browser window.

The downside of such rapid progress is that it is difficult to keep track of it. If today photos are processed in one way when uploading, then tomorrow they may be uploaded in a completely different way! Changes are often not announced or explained. Everything happens quietly and without the knowledge of the user. Which is quite understandable: the site is made as simple as possible, designed for the widest audience.

But back to our photos. For some time now, Contact has begun to display large photos that expand to almost full screen. The image size is limited only by the original resolution of the image, the resolution of the user's monitor and his browser. At the same time, the site stores the original and scales the image to fit the user's window. The key point was that after scaling, the photo was sharpened. Which compensated for the blurring after resizing.

Wherein the best tactic It was necessary to upload large photos to Contact, for example, 1920x1080 in size without additional sharpening. After scaling and sharpening by the site itself, the photos looked good.

For some time now, about a month ago, I noticed that Contact stopped sharpening photos. Since then, everything that was loaded according to the old scheme began to look unsharp. How now to upload pictures to Contact? I have several thoughts on this.

Preparing photos for uploading to Contact

Part I. Sharpness.

Firstly, if we want to show large (in the entire browser window) photos in Vkontakte, then we cannot know the final size of the image, since it depends on the resolution of the viewer's monitor, as well as his browser and even the settings of this browser.

In today's most popular monitor resolution of 1280x1024, a photo in VKontakte "in full window" turns out to be of the following dimensions:

Firefox 4.0 - 1058 horizontally or 760 vertically.

Opera 11- 1054 horizontally or 752 vertically.

Secondly, you need to understand that for optimal clarity, sharpening should occur after resizing the image, and not before, as it happened until recently in Kontakt's algorithms. By the way, the pictures uploaded then are still displayed sharp and neat, i. their sharpness increases after scaling.

So now is the best time to prepare your shots. 1000px in width or 750px in height (for vertical), independently increasing their sharpness before loading. At the same time, they will be displayed quite large on monitors 1280x1024 and higher, with the optimal sharpness that we set up ourselves. Unfortunately, on smaller monitors, such pictures will be reduced and lose image clarity.

If you want to upload large images so that they are displayed in the entire window on any monitors, then before uploading, you should slightly increase their sharpness, which partly compensates for the blurring when scaling the image.

Part II. Color.

Sometimes people complain that Contact spoils the color of photos. But often this is not the fault of Contact at all, but the wrong choice of color space for photography. Pictures uploaded to the Internet (to any site, not just to Contact) must be in the sRGB color space. If the photo is in Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB, or any other color space other than sRGB, then the colors will become dimmer after being uploaded to the web.

Part III. Preparing a Contact Photo in Photoshop

First, make sure our image is in sRGB., to do this, in the lower left corner, click on the small black triangle and select the "Document profile" item in the menu that appears.

This will show the color space of the photo in the bottom line. We need it to be written sRGBIEC61966-2.1, if another color space is indicated there, then we need to change it.

This is done simply. Let's go to the menu: Editing - Convert to Profile…

And in the window that appears, in the field target space choose a profile sRGB. We do not touch the rest and click "OK". It is done!

Second step - resizing. Press Ctrl+Alt+I (Image Size command) and set the width in the window that appears 1000 if we have a horizontal photo, or height 750 if the photo is vertical. In this case, all the checkboxes must be enabled, the “Keep aspect ratio” setting will provide us with the correct aspect ratio. In the section Interpolation should be Bicubic (best for smooth gradients). How to make this algorithm installed by default, you can read in the article.

The third step is sharpening. You can sharpen in many ways, sometimes the most exotic. But I will show one, quite simple, but effective, which I use to sharpen under the WEB.

Menu: Filter - Sharpen - Smart Sharpen…

Parameters: Effect 500, Radius 0.1.

Delete: Blur at shallow depth. The "More precisely" checkbox is enabled.

Now everything is ready. We save the photo in JPEG format with maximum quality (contact will squeeze it anyway) and upload it to Contact!)

Part IV. Preparing Contact Photos in Adobe Lightroom

In order not to get up twice, let's look at how to prepare pictures for a Contact using Lightroom. In LR, everything is much simpler, you need to configure the export parameters as follows:

And everything will be beautiful!)
In general, of course, pictures need to be printed, at least 40 by 60 cm, and preferably more! 🙂