How to Post Art on Twitter Without Ruining the Quality

April 27, 2022 Post a Comment

For pictures on your feed, Twitter don't announced to restrict us near as much as Facebook does, then posting a decent quality picture show to a feed should be relatively easy, right? Well, information technology's trickier than you lot might call back. This Quick Tip aims to go your JPEGs displayed in the best way possible.

Twitter Feed Pictures

Twitter has given us these guidelines:

twitter guidelines — Twitter's Guidelines

Nosotros're focusing on JPEG in this Quick Tip so all examples are in that format. Information technology would seem that with a 5MB limit we already accept a lot more to play with than Facebook. But is that necessarily the case? A 5MB file might be compressed past Twitter downward to the aforementioned as a 3MB or a 1MB file with varying states of distortion. So let'southward find out!

I uploaded iii versions of my above example to my Twitter Feed; a 3000px (4.2MB) file, a 2000px (2.2MB) file and a 1000px (734kb) file. This is how they came out:

pictures after twitter compression — Pictures after Twitter Compression

I saved each paradigm which had been car-resized to 600px by Twitter (you can only salvage the preview but I could screen capture the full-view version which you see in a higher place) and noticed that the file sizes were very interesting.

The 3000px 4.2MB image had come up out at 47.2kb , the 2000px two.2MB at 47.5kb and the 1000px 734kb at 52.4kb . So the larger of the images had actually gone downwards to the smallest size. Interesting when you lot look at the compression on each. The largest image has some compression artefacts but information technology'south also lost a lot of its sharpness across the whole image. The smallest is now the largest file size, but the pinch is very pronounced around the outlines of the people.

Every bit in the instance of Facebook, information technology seems that larger images off-white better; but not likewise big. In my own experience, somewhere around 1500-2000px is about right and if you can lower the file size with Adobe Photoshop'southward Save For Web option then all the better.

Header Photos

This is my example:

Upload of a High Resolution Image

Firstly I tried this at very high resolution,5000px broad and 8MB – the max Twitter volition allow is 10MB.

large resolution twitter header — Big resolution Twitter header

That looked pretty good to me. Information technology's cropped in a little but as information technology was a howdy-res image, that'south okay. You can see at that place's very little visible compression here.

I was pretty smug, until I striking save:

The pinch happened after saving the good looking image. You lot can now see compression around the edges and an overall loss of sharpness

So what if we upload the aforementioned thing merely afterwards resizing to Twitter's recommended 1500 x 500px?

Upload of Twitter'south Recommended Size Paradigm

Recommended size for twitter header — Twitter's recommended header size

Information technology'southward cropped in like the other did just the compression is nowhere near as bad. Hither are the comparisons side by side:

comparisons at 100 — Comparisons of a large size and Twitter'south recommended size at 100%

You can meet the loss of definition in both but the one on the left is far worse, with quite visible baloney, peculiarly around the writing on the gunkhole.

What If...

Twitter's guide's clearly worked improve than a full size prototype but I wondered; what if I took their size, kept the aforementioned ratio only doubled the size. I created a 3000px past 1000px paradigm and tried that:

Twitter header ratio doubled — I tried doubling Twitter'southward recommendation, 3000 x 1500px

Aha! This looks much amend to me; there are nevertheless signs of compression only y'all can run across from the 100% preview in the corner, the writing on the boat is much clearer and the edges of objects have far less visible artefacting.

Summary

3rd party websites are e'er going to compress our images, we just have to detect the best way possible of displaying them with these restrictions. Their guidelines are there for a reason only that's not to say having a play around won't get you amend results.

Getting the best results for feed images

Upload a big(ish) size, ideally between 1500px-2000px
Salvage at maximum quality possible
Reduce the file size with Salve For Web

Getting the best results for embrace images.

3000px by 1000px worked well for me
It must be under 10MB
It will crop in but the results will exist far meliorate than resizing to the recommended 1500px by 500px

Turner Conamill