Sharing your photos on Facebook
This is a call out to everyone that I give photos to - please take a moment to make sure that when you share our pictures, that the great care and attention that went into them is preserved.
Before the shoot, you spent a while getting your look just right, choosing the outfit, doing your hair & make up. My lighting was arranged to make you look wonderful, I toiled over a computer editing the colours, tones & sharpness (and maybe a zit removal or two) to finalise it and make it look completely awesome.
Please, please take some care when you transfer the pics that I send you on Dropbox to your Facebook feed. Because if you do it wrong, you're going to undo all the great things we just did.
The wrong way
Get the image on your screen, take a screen shot on your iphone 4 and then re-upload to FB.
Top: Saved to computer/phone | Bottom: Screenshot & uploaded
The right way
If possible, do your uploading to Facebook from a computer. I know this isn't always possible or convenient, so I'll run through the steps below to get the best results on your phone. On your computer, use the download link on the Dropbox page and then upload the pics in their mid-resolution glory. Use the 'high resolution' option on Facebook. For the techies, I usually save our pics as .png files rather than .jpg because FB doesn't apply it's own disaster-shrinking techniques to PNG files like it does to run-of-the-mill JPGs.
If you must do it on your phone, you need to find a way to 'Save' the picture to the phone, not screen shot it. NEVER ever screen shot it...! Unfortunately, it's not always intuitive how to do that, which can be super annoying.
By the way, if you're reading this on your phone and both the pics above look OK, zoom in or check again when you get home. The bottom one looks awful on a computer (which is how more than half of your friends will see it)!
'Save Image' is your friend!
If you're looking at the Dropbox pics from a Messenger or Facebook link, the best way to get access to it, is to choose the square with an upward-facing arrow, and open in Safari. Once you are in Safari viewing the pic, you can tap the screen, hold your finger down and a 'Save Image' option will appear. 'Save Image' is your friend. Always look for 'Save Image'. This will get your beautiful new profile pic onto the Camera Roll and you're home and dry from there. Upload to Facey and all will be good.
'Why don't you just Facebook message it to me from the start?', you might ask. Even pics sent through Messenger are down-scaled in quality, so it will still undo our good work. Instagram is less of an issue, because the standard size is still 640 pixels square, so even a nasty iPhone 3 screen shot will not look too bad. But it will look shocking on FB - and you won't notice it until you're back home on your computer. Then, who wants to throw away all the 'likes' and do a re-upload... :)
Thank you for taking the time to listen to my rant, and for helping us show our work in the best way possible.
DT