Friday, June 13, 2008

Hey, can anyone tell me how to make my pictures less blurry??

I've been lurking around the blogosphere for a year or so now, but have only recently got this little blog going for myself. It's all a bit new and "learning-curvy" for me.... I need help. The thing that's really annoying me at the moment is that I upload beautifully clear pictures (through Flickr) and most of them go blurry. For example the book shots.... why can't I read the titles once the pic is on the blog? May I ask for any pointers on what I might be doing wrong? Am I a complete ditz who should go back to blog-school...?

I don't have a picture to accompany this post - apart from a confused cow - so I'll put in one that makes me smile....
A couple of months ago my little assistant called me from my office to the studio. "I've drawn a BEAUTIFUL picture for Mummy..... It's a BEAR!". She was right - she'd drawn a bear on the whiteboard! I was so impressed I took a photo of it. Considering she was 2 years and four months old at the time, I think she shows enormous talent.... but then I'm her mother.
And "This is a PIG!" drawn sometime later that week.


Mind you, she hasn't done anything quite so figurative since...and yeah... of course THESE pictures didn't come out blurry. I've no idea why.

11 comments:

mames said...

hmmm, i am not sure of a solution other than checking your resolution on the camera.

i just clicked through some of your flickr shots and they look great to me. maybe not the best person to judge as i am a slightly sleep deprived mama of twins.

love the sewing. so very pretty, so much of it. awesome.

Cathy said...

I definitely can see talent in the pics of the bear and the pig. I would have known it was a pig even if you hadn't told us.

Can't help you with the pics - sorry - I am still trying to work out how to do things as well.

Anonymous said...

I think it is a resolution issue Nikki. How are you resizing the pics? My daughters harp at me all the time about resolution, photo size yada yada.
There is a blogger who's photo's are to die for, and she has some tutorials on photographing for blogs. If you google "pioneer woman" you should be able to find her. (secretly I hate this woman- she is so perfect!)

Nikki said...

Thanks for that link, Connie - and it's great to hear from you!!

Her work really is lovely and there are lots of hints. Haven't found an answer to my particular issue but I'll keep looking.

Louise said...

That so does look like a pig. I love that her drawings (or drawniks as my 2yr old calls them) are huge. My little one makes tiny little drawings all over everything and I mean everything!

Nikki said...

We get great BIG "drawniks" over everything!! She stands on a chair to use the whiteboard.

Melanie Gray Augustin said...

Hey Nikki! What resolution are you shooting on?

Actually, I've just popped in to look at your Flickr page and the one's you've put up recently are looking great, it looks like you may have fixed the problem.

If you're still not pleased with them, do you use the sharpening filter on photoshop?

Feel free to email me if you need any help.

Sigrid said...

As I understand it right it's the pictures on your blog that's your problem (not the flickr pictures itself). I can think of two things that might help: when you upload a picture there's an option "Shrink to fit", that's on by default. Does it help if you de-activate that option?
Another thing would be to make the sidebar a bit wider to accomodate larger pictures, but then you have to tweak the html code.

Lara said...

Hi Nikki!

I think sigrid's suggestion is on the money - the photos only look weird on your blog because they're being shrunk slightly by blogger to fit your blog. Like the picture with the book spines - when you click on it, it opens a slightly larger version which is much clearer even tho it's only a little bit bigger.

I've had the same problem with my own blog and find the best solution is to not link from flickr but instead upload the images directly into blogger - then they'll be scaled in the "proper" way (i'd run out of words trying to explain that what means tho :) )

Great to discover your blog by the way!

Nikki said...

Thanks for the tips, everyone!! I can see that it's got to be some sort of issue with "shrink to fit" but can't find a check-box to uncheck.... As of the large spot and striped purse above, I'm uploading directly to Blogger and avoiding Flicker for blog pics.

Unknown said...

I have had the same problem too, but now I save all my photos at either the exact pixel width I am going to need, or double if I want my readers to be able to click through to a larger version. So, say I want to put a 400px wide image on my blog, i either make it 400px or 800px wide before I upload to photobucket - it's taken care of the problem for me :)