Viewing photos online - horrible quality, help!!!

I'm not exactly sure how to explain this, but...a couple days ago I noticed that when I view photos online, dark areas have no detail. They seem very 'muddy', almost like a colored pencil or charcoal edit was done to them. Where there should be detail, it's just a solid dark area now. The sharpness of the rest of the picture (lighter areas) isn't as noticeable, but the dark areas are just a solid black/dark patch. This is happening for any pictures I view online. If I open a pic in DPP or my picture viewer (Irfanview) they look fine. I will look at a pic I posted on flickr, and open the same pic in DPP or Irfanview and the difference is mind boggling. This isn't just happening with my pics, but all pics I view online.

Could this be from some sort of Windows update or virus? It was not like this a few days ago.

Any help? This is driving me crazy!

Thanks,

~Ace

Ace and Deuce wrote in post #15361055
I'm not exactly sure how to explain this, but...a couple days ago I noticed that when I view photos online, dark areas have no detail. They seem very 'muddy', almost like a colored pencil or charcoal edit was done to them. Where there should be detail, it's just a solid dark area now. The sharpness of the rest of the picture (lighter areas) isn't as noticeable, but the dark areas are just a solid black/dark patch. This is happening for any pictures I view online. If I open a pic in DPP or my picture viewer (Irfanview) they look fine. I will look at a pic I posted on flickr, and open the same pic in DPP or Irfanview and the difference is mind boggling. This isn't just happening with my pics, but all pics I view online.

Could this be from some sort of Windows update or virus? It was not like this a few days ago.

Any help? This is driving me crazy!

Thanks,

~Ace

Are your pictures pixelated ? ? ? Have you looked at your Flickr pictures on someone else's computer ? ? ?
I too have had similar issues and posted a thread about it a few months ago but no conclusions were ever reached !!! I checked my pictures on my Dads PC and they looked fine. One of my images I had concerns over was 'explored' on Flicker so I knew the issue was of me and my laptop I still have the same problems, its very irritating and makes me not want to go out as I can't appreciate the final output.
( one thing though, I haven't tried to print a pic off to check what it does )

Flickr pictures look fine on another PC and 2 smartphones, so I know it's my computer. They aren't pixelated, but almost like they were edited with a charcoal tool in Photoshop. Very frustrating!

Hi, had similar problem. Took a while and some stress to work out!
IMHO there is a big difference between the different image viewers. In my experience Internet Explorer represents images reasonably however Windows Photo Viewer produces a significantly degraded view of the same image. If I then re-look at the image in IE it shows up well.
Perhaps try different viewing programs.

PS - you are not crazy and this isn't a result of a virus!