BigAl007 wrote in post #16468723
First what JPEG compression level are you using? This can have a significant effect especially across areas with smooth gradients. In LR I would use a setting of 80 (10 in PS) for the best comprimise of actual file size/image quality.
The DPI/PPI resolution setting will make no difference to the way the image is displayed on screen, but 2048 DPI is a very high value to use. In the LR Export dialogue though are settings for output sharpening. This includes setting the DPI value. I would set this to around 100 for images destined for screen display, it is a reasonable average for MOST display screens. I normally use Screen and Normal for the other output sharpening values. Of course this is not perfect for Retina type displays but they are still not very common yet.
The other problem for Retina displays is that the resoltion is so high (approacing that of high quality printing) that for most applications the whole display is resiized to give you a similar sized display as a non Retina display. If it did not do this then everything would look three times smaller on a Retina display than an ordinary one. Depending on the actual size of the image this may not always look great.
How are you accessing the web on the laptop? If you are using mobile broadband some of the providers re-compress all images on websites to reduce the amount of data transmitted. This is technically a breech of copyright but good luck to a photog enforcing that one. It can though end up making images look really bad.
Similar to above, are you sure both your image size (in pixels) and file size on disk are both within the allowable image sizes for the sites that are hosting the images? If the host is resizing the image automatically, either for pixel dimensions/file size they are unlikely to make a good job of it.
What browser are you using to look at the images with online? Some are better than others at displaying images. As you can open images directly into the browser you could try viewing the file in the browser before you up load it. That would let you know if it were a problem with the local system or something being done by the server/ISP.
Alan
These are the settings I use in lightroom
and these are the settings for photoshop, the first is when I resize the image, and the second and third box is when I "save for web"
The image quality I choose in photoshop is 8
i have alternated between 2048 image resolution and the original 240 but after uploading I see the same results for either. I'll have to try 100 like you mention though.
Ahh, that also explains a lot (about the retina display), I did not know that! Man, it kind of makes me not want to have retina display now. But maybe if I get the resolution figured out and looking good on a non-retina display I'll just ignore how it looks on my laptop.
BigAl007 wrote in post #16468723
How are you accessing the web on the laptop?
I am accessing the internet through my DSL internet provider
BigAl007 wrote in post #16468723
are you sure both your image size (in pixels) and file size on disk are both within the allowable image sizes for the sites that are hosting the images?
Well, for FB I just looked through the threads in this forum and in google, and the settings i'm using were the "recommended" settings, but the settings mentioned were just the 960px on the long side and having 2048px DPI. For model mayhem I also did choose their maximum image size allowed.
BigAl007 wrote in post #16468723
What browser are you using to look at the images with online?
I'm using Safari. Ohh, is it by dragging the image file on to the browser what you mean? I did not know that would show me how it should look online. When I do that most of them look how they do on my laptop, except some like the black and white one I have above.