Promo Image Quality

Hey guys, I did a search and couldn't find any useful info, but when I upload images to for the promo box on the homepage, I upload them with very specefic quality settings, none of them are too large with the largest image coming in at 54kb, but for some reason some script somewhere insists on generating a lower quality image and using it instead of the image I made.

At first I got around this by putting the images directly in the media/promo folder and not using the uploader, but it only delayed the image quality degradation.  I need to know how to prevent this from happening as I am using text in my images and the text goes to crap.

I'm pretty sure that what you upload for the promo image(s) is what you get. Are you sure you had them the right physical size? If you don't, it will force them to the correct size and this can play havoc with the image quality. I think the default sizes are 994 X 262 px.

Ya that was the first thing I thought of.  I know for a fact that something is compressing the image because you can upload a image to the promo folder, and it will have the original image in an original folder and it will be the original size, and then there will be the same image in the promo folder and it will be a smaller filesize.  I could understand if I was uploading 200kb images and it was compressing to 50kb, but these are 50kb images getting compressed to ike 40kb, just enough to take the quality to crap.

I think you are wrong. Try right clicking on an image as it rolls over in the banner and check the properties. Mine are all exactly as I uploaded them The smaller image you see in tha folder is just a thumbnail that displays the image in the admin/basic section so you can identify what it is

I've got no real idea but for what it is worth...there is a setting in Dolphin that asks if you want images cached. I'm not sure why caching would cause a change to the quality but it might be worth checking out whether this is on or perhaps if another version uploaded earlier is coming back from the cache.

Caching an image has no effect on it's quality whatsoever.

I think you're wrong as well, so where does that put us. I have recently uploaded a membership image.  The original is 8kb and looks perfect, the version that is showing on the site is 2.16kb and looks like garbage.

I am perfectly capable of optimizing my own images and this is very annoying, so where is my mysterious compression coming from?

Ok, what the hell is a membership image? Are you talking about the big rotating banner image that displays on the index page or the avatar image or something else? You need to be clear before you start trying to pick a fight with me. I'm just trying to help you.

When you create a new membership level, you are forced to upload an image to go with it.  Telling me you think I'm wrong doesn't help me,  I am not an idiot.

Did you or did you not post this initially?

Hey guys, I did a search and couldn't find any useful info, but when I upload images to for the promo box on the homepage.

What the hell does that have to do with membership type icons? We are not idiots either but you at least have to have the common decency to give us a path of information we can actually follow!....

What is your deal man? I said that images that I upload using dolphin have shitty quality, this started with the promo images and is now being seen on the membership level images meaning it is not just the promo images.

Ok, looks like I gotta eat my words here. Someone DID change how the promo images work. You are right, they are being compressed now. I'm not sure when this started happening but on closer inspection, my images look like shit now as well! I am sorry. This is something new to me.

Going to do a little investigating, I'll get back to you....

Ok, it's obviously tied in with the upload feature somehow. I imagine it's using whatever compression is used for the photo gallery and other image uploads. One way around it is to manually overwrite the images in /media/images/promo with the original ones. I'm going to try it and see how it works.

You can adjust the setting for jpg compression for the entire site, I just can't remember where at the moment. I'll think of it in a minute...

Wow, what a difference! Like you, I spent a lot of time perfectly compressing my banner images. I was not aware (and thanks for pointing it out) that the system was further compressing my images. I am pretty sure way back when we were in beta that it wasn't compressing the promo images. Somewhere it started and I never noticed.

I manually replaced my promo banner images with my original ones bypassing the uploader and now they are as they should be.. .

As for the quality of the rest of the site photos, check this post....

http://www.boonex.com/unity/forums/?action=goto&search=1#topic/Bad-photo-quality-after-upload-.htm

Awesome find, that is what I was looking for, thank you so much.  Sorry for any hostility, I was just getting frustrated because I couldn't get a hold of my agent or any other agent and I've purchased a license... so it left me very frustrated.  Just like you, I had manually placed the images, and that helped for a little bit but I think once I uploaded a different image (such as the member level iamge) it went ahead and recompressed them all?  It was strange and I am glad that we have solved this.  Once again, thank you very much!