Skip to main content
Participant
November 14, 2022
Question

Images in Portfolio look like garbage

  • November 14, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 2740 views

I don't see a Portfolio forum, so I'm posting here.

 

My images in Lightroom Classic look great, but when I get them over to Portfolio they lose resolution and even have obvious and horrible jpeg artifacts. It's quite embarrassing to show my work that way after all the work I did. I don't see anywhere on the Lightroom Classic side or the Portfolio side to control the quality of the export. Does anyone have any ideas? Do I need to use a different hosting site to show great-looking images?

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Nancy OShea
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 20, 2022

[Moderator moved from Lightroom Classic to Creative Cloud Services.]

 

@ThomasBartman,

Web pages have limitations, owing to how web browsers work. Browser resolution is about 96 ppi.  Image rendition is based on supported viewport size (height x width).  The maximum width that Portfolio supports is 3840px for Retina (HI-DPI) displays and 1920px for large to 4K screens.  See below for more details.

 

For best results, optimize images for the web BEFORE you export to Portfolio.  I use Photoshop's File > Export > Export As feature to rescale images, convert to sRGB color mode and reduce file size.  This limits bandwidth consumption by mobile devices that may have restricted data plans.  See screenshot.

 

 

Portfolio recommends using images that are are under 20MB however I prefer to keep images way below that threshold to promote faster loading pages and a better overall user experience.  Humans have the attention span of a goldfish.  They won't wait for excessively slow web pages to load.

 

PhotoGrid with the optional Lightbox viewer shows a low res preview on the page but when clicked, a full size image loads in the viewer.   Lightbox viewer is controlled from Site Settings. See links below.

 

If you need more help with Portfolio, consult the knowledgebase below or contact the Portfolio Team for technical support.


- FAQ & Knowledgebase - https://help.myportfolio.com/hc/
- Contact Portfolio Support - https://help.myportfolio.com/hc/requests/new?ticket_form_id=177168

Hope that helps.

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
Participant
November 16, 2022

[Moderator branched & merged with other post on same topic.]

 

I edit from RAW files in Lightroom Classic and they look great. I can even export to high-quality JPG on my hard drive, and those look great in the Windows Photo app. I have a few collections that sync to Lightroom CC and then Portfolio.

 

However, I noticed that when I look at the photos on the web on my Portfolio site, they lose resolution, look like there's bad JPG artifact (color banding in the sky, etc.) - just garbage.

 

So for kicks I closed Lightroom Classic and I opened Lightroom CC on my computer, and they also look horrible there! Why don't they look pristine in Lightroom CC like they do in Lightroom Classic when I have the collections set to sync? Is there a quality setting I'm missing somewhere?

 

My portfolio is at https://tbartman.myportfolio.com/shenandoah-2022 - look at the photo with the rays of light coming through the clouds, then look at the jpg I've attached which was exported from Lightroom classic!

 

To recap - the problem seems to be as the photos are going to the cloud (Lightroom CC) and between there and Portfolio

 

I'll love you forever if you can help me!

F. McLion
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 16, 2022

Photos in collection in Classic are synced as Smart Previews to the cloud.

This is a reduced, Adobe internal format. That must be the reason for the reduction in quality you see.

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/sync-faq.html

 

--- Got your issue resolved? Please label the response as 'Correct Answer' to help your fellow community members find a solution to similar problems. ---
johnrellis
Genius
November 16, 2022

[This post contains formatting and embedded images that don't appear in email. View the post in your Web browser.]

 

To build on that, the smart previews synced to the cloud are 8-bit "linear raw" DNGs with lossy compression, 2560 pixels wide.

 

I think the artifacts in the sky:

 

are caused by the quantization of 8 bits per channel. (When you're working with raws in LR, you've got 16 bits per channel.)