Illustrator to Facebook woes

[emmaf49259328]

Hey everyone,
I'm fairly new to illustrator, but know basics. I have designed a Facebook cover photo for a page. It consists of a photo, some vector art (text) and a black background.

I have exported as a PNG at 300ppi, a jpeg, a tiff, and all look fantastic on my computer (Macbook Pro), and great when I upload to Facebook - but, when I go on my boyfriend's computer, and both of our phones (iphone, samsung), it looks absolutely horrible! Pixelated, low quality. Why is this? I have tried 'save for web', and exported as a jpeg and png-24. I have doubled the size as a jpeg and uploaded to facebook. I have tried exporting it at 72ppi. I have tried with the image embedded, and not embeded. It's the same issue EVERY time.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,

Emma.

[JonathanArias]

can you try taking that image you make with illustrator into photoshop and saving for web again?

does the image display correctly now?

[emmaf49259328]

Thanks for your reply, I tried bringing the image into photoshop and also recreating it in Photoshop and the quality reduced significantly. I tried to recreate it in Photoshop and resized the photo I used so that it would fit onto the canvas, it was totally pixelated and terrible resolution. I'm really at a loss I have been at this for two days now

[Monika Gause]

emmaf49259328  schrieb

I'm really at a loss I have been at this for two days now

As I said: Facebook does its own compression and so does your friend's mobile provider.

Can you perhaps show screenshots of that compressed image in comparison to the original file?

[Monika Gause]

Facebook applies additional compression to photos.

And not only that: some mobile providers apply additional compressiom once your boyfriend logs in with his phone and goes surfing. There might be some setup in his mobile plan, but if he switches to high res full view, he might have trouble surfing by the 10th each month, since he might have download limit.

[Omar.Fathy]

You should use the Save for Web Command;

File> Export> Save for web (Legacy)

Facebook optimize the quality of images if its size is more than 100 kb  so you should optimize your image manually by saving for web before you upload it to make it under 100 kb.
Reduce the quality till your image be less than 100 kb.

[emmaf49259328]

I have tried the Save for Web option, and there was no option to reduce the size... I have tried saving as a jpeg in Photoshop and moving the slider down until it is just under 100kb, but this makes my image quality terrible... Have tried nearly everything I can think of, is there a way to reduce size without sacrificing quality? My photo is large, around 2MB.

[Jacob Bugge]

Emma,

I have tried the Save for Web option, and there was no option to reduce the size...

As Omar said, you can reduce the quality (when using JPEG), to at least choose the misery yourself. You may try different levels and see.

[Monika Gause]

I just tried.

When you upload an 8 KB JPEG, Facebook doesn't do any compression. But even with a 24KB JPEG, Facebook compresses it.

At least for my image there wasn't so much noticeable difference in the compressed images, no matter if they were 107 KB or 62 KB. To my mind the 107 KB looked better than the 62 KB one after Facebook compression.

Of course they all looked shitty compared to the original PNG:

And yes, it's a nice story with the accessibility for everyone, but mostly this is about webspace. It has the added benefit of accessibilty and being good to the environment, but mostly it serves Facebook's market value. The JPEG standard is just not suitable for vector images. And while Facebook is powerful they still cannot establish a new image compression algorithm without collaborating with browser manufacturers.

The red parts in that image look particularly shitty when compressed. This was the 92 KB version of that image, which Facebook turned into a 22 KB JPEG. It compressed the 64 KB and the 24 KB version of my file also into a 22 KB file.

[Srishti Bali]

Hi Emma,

I would like to know if the steps suggested above worked for you, or the issue still persists.

Kindly update the discussion if you need further assistance with it.

Thanks,

Srishti

[KShinabery212]

The simple answer is that Facebook compresses images. 

A long time ago, I was upset about this as well.  I then messaged a friend that I met at Siggraph years ago and who now works for Facebook.  He told me that Facebook compresses images (even photos, which is less noticable).  Reason being that not every country has fast internet connections and they want all their users to be able to view the site quickly.

Fast forward to today.  Facebook has somewhat fixed this (and of course they should as artists use Facebook to promote their work and Facebook allows one to even set up Artist pages).  Granted it is not as bad as it was two or three years ago... but sometimes you still notice it.

Now you are not doing anything wrong and it is not a problem with your Adobe software.  It is just Facebook.  Even Instagram compresses images to some extent (not as bad as Facebook), but it does.

Like I mentioned..... they even do this to photographs.  If you Google  'Facebook, image compression'  then you will find tons of articles on this subject.

What I have noticed is that graphics that are one color without shading, without highlights, without gradients tend to look the worst when uploaded.  Ones that have lots of shading, highlights, gradients and detail tend to hide the compression.

I know.... one would think Facebook would simply get with the program.  They know artists are showing their work there and even video game companies.  Even cartoon shows..... so why can not they not just solve the problem for good?

But like I said.... it was a million times worse a couple of years ago.  So they are slowly but surely trying to change things.