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ThomasBartman
Participant
November 14, 2022
Question

Images in Portfolio look like garbage

  • November 14, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 2752 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?

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2 replies

Nancy OShea
Community Expert
Nancy OSheaCommunity 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
T
ThomasBartmanAuthor
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
F. McLionCommunity 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

 

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Jim Wilde
Community Expert
Jim WildeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 16, 2022

Thank you both SO MUCH! You figured it out. It's annoying that the sync from Classic to CC is low quality because I want to do all my work in Classic (I have LOTS of photos and don't want to pay for TB of cloud space, plus I just work in Classic usually), but I do want to get select photos onto Portfolio and the only way to do that is through CC. Here's the work-around I just tried (successfully) thanks to your help:

 

  • Turn off (pause) sync in Classic (in the upper right), so nothing I do later in CC gets pulled over to Classic
  • Turn off "sync with Lightroom" for my collections in Classic (the little double-arrow), so nothing I do in Classic goes over to CC
  • At this point, each program is ignorant / independent of the other - GOOD!
  • Export the files as high-quality jpgs from Classic, close Classic, open CC, and import them there. This makes sure that CC has only the photos I want for the web, the quality is at least somewhat decent, and as jpgs will use less of my free storage
  • Then in Portfolio, add the CC collection to my website

 

I then opened the original photo in develop mode in Classic, the exported jpeg in the Windows Photo Viewer, and the photo on the Portfolio website at the same time on the same monitor. If I grade the original at 100% quality, the exported jpeg was like 99%, and the web photo like 90-95% but WAY better than it was before. As John mentioned, there is a slight touch of artifact on the web photo that isn't in the jpeg I exported, but you have to look for it now instead of it smacking me in the face.

 

Thanks again to you both - when my family looks at my photos now on the web it won't be embarrassing!

 


quote

Here's the work-around I just tried (successfully) thanks to your help:

 

  • Turn off (pause) sync in Classic (in the upper right), so nothing I do later in CC gets pulled over to Classic
  • Turn off "sync with Lightroom" for my collections in Classic (the little double-arrow), so nothing I do in Classic goes over to CC
  • At this point, each program is ignorant / independent of the other - GOOD!
  • Export the files as high-quality jpgs from Classic, close Classic, open CC, and import them there. This makes sure that CC has only the photos I want for the web, the quality is at least somewhat decent, and as jpgs will use less of my free storage
  • Then in Portfolio, add the CC collection to my website

 

 

Be aware then if/when you subsequently resume syncing in Classic, two things will happen:

 

1. Regarding the collections that you turned off syncing with Lightroom, when you resume syncing that change will sync to Lightroom, which will result in the corresponding albums being removed from Lightroom (though the contained images will still exist in the cloud, accessible via "All Photos". To be honest, having paused syncing, I'm not sure why you unsynced all those collections. You might want to think about re-syncing them before you un-pause syncing in Classic.

2. All those jpegs that you imported into Lightroom will download into Classic and will be added to the catalog, so you might want to think about how you intend to deal with that.

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