Facebook posts and article images

That's not the image I'm seeing when I cap it or post it.

And does the image look like that on TVMaze itself? I'm going to the article page, and it doesn't look like the above. The FB image above is... a lot blurrier. Nobody has communicated to me what the requirements are for screencaps outside of TVMaze.

Looking at the specs on the image that I'm seeing, it appears to be 500w x 292h pixels, at a 72 DPI. I can crank up the DPI: what would work best?

FYI, the best way to contact me is to use TVMaze's messaging system. There's nothing in my message box.

Well, the DPI settings have nothing to do with the web images, and basically have no meaning unless you're gonna print the image on paper. Changing the DPI have no effect on the image itself. Increasing the resolution, however, would work perfectly. Considering that the most contemporary TV shows are being released in Full HD, 1920x1080 pixels seems to be a perfect choice and 1280x720 could be a reasonable compromise. For older shows, the resolution of DVD video should be considered a minimum. This would be 720x576 for PAL (European) shows and 640x480 for NTSC (US, Japan etc.) shows.

Also, the JPG compression quality is critical, and it shouldn't be set lower than 85-90%, to avoid the compression artefacts and preserve the image details. All of this would give you a decent image which would not look degraded in any real world scenario.

tnt wrote:
Well, the DPI settings have nothing to do with the web images, and basically have no meaning unless you're gonna print the image on paper. Changing the DPI have no effect on the image itself. Increasing the resolution, however, would work perfectly. Considering that the most contemporary TV shows are being released in Full HD, 1920x1080 pixels seems to be a perfect choice and 1280x720 could be a reasonable compromise. For older shows, the resolution of DVD video should be considered a minimum. This would be 720x576 for PAL (European) shows and 640x480 for NTSC (US, Japan etc.) shows.

Also, the JPG compression quality is critical, and it shouldn't be set lower than 85-90%, to avoid the compression artefacts and preserve the image details. All of this would give you a decent image which would not look degraded in any real world scenario.

I'm afraid I don't entirely know what that means. I can't make the width of the image any bigger without screwing up the article on TVMaze. So the issue would seem to be... the compression? I use IRFanView, and it looks like the compression quality is at about 80% if I'm reading it correctly. I can set it to 90% for the aforementioned BL article and we can see if that makes a difference.

If 85%-90% is preferred and I'm doing 80%, it doesn't seem that I'm so far off that it would be degrading the image to the degree that FB shows.

How's the image is displayed in the article is not depends on the image resolution. I have not seen the article editor, but I suppose you could scale the image of any size to fit your formatting, while the original is gonna be saved untouched on TVmaze server. Have a look at those articles:

https://www.tvmaze.com/articles/353/ratings-roundup-week-of-september-30-2018

https://www.tvmaze.com/articles/344/a-million-little-things-pilot-review

Both have an image about 1000 pixels wide, and it fits perfectly in the formatting, nothing is distorted. The same happens with the episode images, when you're uploading the big image and the system downscaling it when needed.

Bumping DPI would not help, believe me. Only a professional image editor software would respect those settings, and they would only have a meaning when you will print the image on the paper. For the computer displayed images only pixel resolution matters.

Let me give you an example. Imagine a 19" PC display and a 60" TV, both set at 1920x1080 resolution. Both are displaying the same 1920x1080 image. But the physical dimensions of the image on TV would be 3 times bigger. Which means that every inch of TV screen would have roughly 3 times less pixels than PC display, and DPI (PPI actually, there's no Dots on computer screen, only Pixels) is depends on the display rather than the image itself.

Well, I changed what I think is the JPG compression to 90%. When Shelley okays the article (presumably sometime Wednesday morning) take a look at it and let me know if that fixed the issue. I'll keep the images on hand to do whatever else is needed, if something else is needed.

Or if I need to do something else... what it is that I need to do in IRFanView. Unfortunately, I don't have access to PhotoShop. I could save the image at a biggerheight/width like 1920 x 1080 and then grab the resizing handles and size it down to what will fit in the articles. That'll look rather... inconsistent, since as far I can tell I'd have to do the resizing in the text editor by hand and eyeball. The text editor doesn't have an automatic resizing tool the way it looks like your galleries and episode screencap pages do.

There are some other Save As options in IRFanView, including an option to Save by: Set File Size. From some spot research on the Internet, that might be part of the issue. But then I'd need to know what file size you want me to save at (currently it's at 65 KB).

Again, messaging me via the TVMaze mail is the quickest way to get hold of me. Also please keep in mind that I'm a writer, not a graphic artist.

Thanks!

Could you share with us, please, one of your images exactly as you've grabbed it from the episode? Without any processing, scaling etc. Maybe the problem lies deeper than I thought...

tnt wrote:
How's the image is displayed in the article is not depends on the image resolution. I have not seen the article editor, but I suppose you could scale the image of any size to fit your formatting, while the original is gonna be saved untouched on TVmaze server. Have a look at those articles:

https://www.tvmaze.com/articles/353/ratings-roundup-week-of-september-30-2018

https://www.tvmaze.com/articles/344/a-million-little-things-pilot-review

Both have an image about 1000 pixels wide, and it fits perfectly in the formatting, nothing is distorted. The same happens with the episode images, when you're uploading the big image and the system downscaling it when needed.

Bumping DPI would not help, believe me. Only a professional image editor software would respect those settings, and they would only have a meaning when you will print the image on the paper. For the computer displayed images only pixel resolution matters.

Let me give you an example. Imagine a 19" PC display and a 60" TV, both set at 1920x1080 resolution. Both are displaying the same 1920x1080 image. But the physical dimensions of the image on TV would be 3 times bigger. Which means that every inch of TV screen would have roughly 3 times less pixels than PC display, and DPI (PPI actually, there's no Dots on computer screen, only Pixels) is depends on the display rather than the image itself.

My guess would be that the authors are manually resizing the images, as I show JessG's as 1,000 wide and Shelley's as 1,014 when I download the image to my desktop, open the with IRF, and check the settings.

The image only appears to be a bit larger (certainly not twice as wide), so as I said, it appears that manual resizing is responsible. That will cause rather spotty results in the stuff I write if I have to manually resize, but I'll go back and try it with the BL review. Let me know if that resolves the issue.

tnt wrote:
Could you share with us, please, one of your images exactly as you've grabbed it from the episode? Without any processing, scaling etc. Maybe the problem lies deeper than I thought...

How would I go about sharing them? I don't have a PhotoBucket account or the equivalent. Maybe my stepson does...

Otherwise, for now I'll try the 1,000 width size and manually resizing them. As I don't think the text editor has an image resizing feature: I'll poke around a bit.

Thanks!

-----

Well, I set them to 1,000 and resized them manually within the article. Let me know how it looks.

Gislef wrote:

Or if I need to do something else... what it is that I need to do in IRFanView. Unfortunately, I don't have access to PhotoShop. I could save the image at a biggerheight/width like 1920 x 1080 and then grab the resizing handles and size it down to what will fit in the articles. That'll look rather... inconsistent, since as far I can tell I'd have to do the resizing in the text editor by hand and eyeball. The text editor doesn't have an automatic resizing tool the way it looks like your galleries and episode screencap pages do.

There are some other Save As options in IRFanView, including an option to Save by: Set File Size. From some spot research on the Internet, that might be part of the issue. But then I'd need to know what file size you want me to save at (currently it's at 65 KB).

Again, messaging me via the TVMaze mail is the quickest way to get hold of me. Also please keep in mind that I'm a writer, not a graphic artist.

Thanks!

Having an open discussion is better, the others may have some insight to share.

As far as I can tell, there's basically no file size limits on TVmaze, so if you could ignore that option, please do. Considering that only a first (main) image in the article have an exposure outside TVmaze, you only need one image in high resolution. As an auxiliary option you could always use the image from the episode's promo set, which are often available on the web.

Question for Jan and David: guys, do the article editor constrains the image proportions when resizing, or you need like hold the Shift key or something? Is the editor WYSIWYG or it's something different?

Gislef wrote:
How would I go about sharing them? I don't have a PhotoBucket account or the equivalent. Maybe my stepson does...

You could use https://imgur.com/, green button at the top left to upload the image, and then share the link here.

Well I may have screwed up your test, as I edited the article before checking the forum. So the first image is a promo shot from the CW site. Apologies. I'll post Gislef's next article as is so you can check image quality then.

OK seriously, something is up with Facebook and images. The image in the article is a promo from the CW. I even set it as the main image for the article. When I wrote the announcement, the image came up as the promo image just like it's supposed to. The Facebook post on my feed is completely screwed up. I have no idea why. (Gislef I apologise this is happening on your article!)

Facebook shows: https://imgur.com/lUHpsOV

What the announcement shows: https://imgur.com/OEVZsYf

Also, I have no way to fix the Facebook post as I'm not an admin on that account.

I'm seeing the same. Weird. I've seen that with some other article before, so I don't think that's your fault. Something wasn't cached in time probably.

BTW, the correct episode title should read "The Book of Consequences: Chapter One: The Rise of the Green Light Babies". Initially the "Chapter One" part was misplaced.

@shelley: try buffer next time you post instead of hootsuite. Maybe it has something to do with that. If it doesn't improve send me a pm.

tnt wrote:
Having an open discussion is better, the others may have some insight to share.

As far as I can tell, there's basically no file size limits on TVmaze, so if you could ignore that option, please do. Considering that only a first (main) image in the article have an exposure outside TVmaze, you only need one image in high resolution. As an auxiliary option you could always use the image from the episode's promo set, which are often available on the web.

Question for Jan and David: guys, do the article editor constrains the image proportions when resizing, or you need like hold the Shift key or something? Is the editor WYSIWYG or it's something different?

Having an open discussion if we can't resolve the issue initially is better, sure. Also, notifying me of such an open discussion via messaging is better. I stumbled on this more or less by accident.

I didn't say anything about file size limits, so I'm not sure what option you want me to ignore. I use 500 because... a size of 500 consistently works best on-screen without subsequently having to manually resize it. It looks like in other articles like the ones cited, an approximate width of 500 on the page is used. About two-fifths of the page width on my monitor.

Image proportions are automatically constrained by the article editor. You don't need to hold the shift key. However, the issue isn't the proportions but the overall size. Right? Apparently you do have to manually resize it, but that doesn't affect the proportions. Also, if you anchor it left/right, it "sticks" to that side even during resizing.

I'm not big on using promo images: doesn't it help the site's SEO and appeal in general if we use images that aren't the same as the network's (and half a dozen other sites that use the network's)? Not to mention that I typically select images from the episode that match what I'm talking about in that particular paragraph. There's a little bit of mental stretching for the first photo in general, since TVMaze automatically uses it as the "feature" photo. The current photo for the BL article doesn't relate to... well, anything in the text accompanying it. It's also rather badly centered when it comes to the auto-thumbnailing on the main page: something else I try to focus on when selecting a lead image.

Look at the Rod Serling/Night Gallery thumbnail image for an example of what I mean. Serling is... well, centered in it. The BL image cuts Cress Williams' head in half on the right-hand side.

tnt wrote:
You could use https://imgur.com/, green button at the top left to upload the image, and then share the link here.

I gave it a try. Here's a pretty standard image size and sharpness that I use.

https://imgur.com/a/dLb23Fe

That's essentially the same that I use for any articles that I write. It doesn't look like the FB image you provided earlier, quality-wise. I show it as a 720 x 404 pixel dimension: as noted, I would typically resize it to 500 (by 281) in IRF before inserting it into an article using the editor.

All of the images in the BL article from last night were resized to 1000 (by 561). I don't know if you can see the other images besides the first on FB, since Shelley changed that image.

LadyShelley wrote:
Well I may have screwed up your test, as I edited the article before checking the forum. So the first image is a promo shot from the CW site. Apologies. I'll post Gislef's next article as is so you can check image quality then.

Next article will most likely be tonight, for American Horror Story. Again, I'll go with the 1000w pixel size.

Referring back to something tnt said earlier, for older shows like Have Gun, Will Travel and Night Gallery, I'm limited to either my local cable feeds or DVDs which for older shows are not always the greatest resolution.The alternatives to providing at least some original images would be to either not include images, or use more generic ones. And some of the generic images are so small that resizing them definitely causes what I understand is considered image degradation.

It seems like we're getting into an area of sizing and resizing, manual versus automatic resizing, and pixel size, that I'm not familiar with and have some technical limitations such as the lack of a comprehensive photo-editing program and working with what I'm familiar with (i.e., IRFanView).

Again, I apologize for my unfamiliarity. To quote a phrase, "I'm a writer, not a graphic artist!" :)

tnt wrote:
BTW, the correct episode title should read "The Book of Consequences: Chapter One: The Rise of the Green Light Babies". Initially the "Chapter One" part was misplaced.

I cut-n-pasted the title that TVMaze has listed. If I'm reading the edit log correctly (first time) it looks like you changed it after I did so.

I didn't want to mismatch the article title with the TVMaze title in any case. It looks like Shelley edited the title in the article as well.

Gislef wrote:
I gave it a try. Here's a pretty standard image size and sharpness that I use.

https://imgur.com/a/dLb23Fe

That's essentially the same that I use for any articles that I write. It doesn't look like the FB image you provided earlier, quality-wise. I show it as a 720 x 404 pixel dimension: as noted, I would typically resize it to 500 (by 281) in IRF before inserting it into an article using the editor.

All of the images in the BL article from last night were resized to 1000 (by 561). I don't know if you can see the other images besides the first on FB, since Shelley changed that image.

It seems that you not understood me correctly. I never suggested that you upscale the images, scaling them from 720 to 1000 pixels only make them much much worse. If you're not able to capture the images at higher resolution, the best possible course of actions would be to use your original (720 px) images without any additional processing. I don't know, if the TVmaze policy could be applied to articles, but considering episode images it states: Please upload images in the highest available resolution.