May 31, 2016 at 12:45 am

I have noticed there are a small handful of posts here at LiteracyBase that have blurry, unprofessional looking photos. I know if this happened on one of my posts I would feel bad about it, and especially since we aren’t able to edit without contacting the staff for assistance, it’s important to get the image right the first time.

When you choose a featured image for your posts, please think about the following:

1. The image size requested by LiteracyBase is 1200 px x 600 px. That’s an image that is in the horizontal or landscape orientation. Please choose a pic that is wider than it is tall.
2. Most images on royalty-free sites like Pixabay, or even on Wikipedia, will by default download at the 600 px or 800 px width. You need a wider image. You can usually select for wider, so look for that option.

Selecting an image as close to the 1200 x 600 size requested is best for display purposes. You can also learn to use free editing apps to make collages, or to use the free graphics in other creative ways. When the photo that illustrates your post looks great, more people will want to click it!

• This topic was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by  Kyla Matton Osborne (Ruby3881). Reason: Forgot to add topic tags

May 31, 2016 at 12:41 pm

@ Kyla Matton Osborne (Ruby3881) Thanks for sharing this info! I am quite particular about the use of images and always give proper credit. But I like the way you creatively edit the photographs with your posts.

May 31, 2016 at 4:47 pm

Why does it happen? Better ask the admin why an image got blurred.It is better to have no image at all. I do not know if allowed not to include an image in our blog. As I see, we are required 2 images.

June 1, 2016 at 10:26 am

@swalia I think many on this site could use a refresher course in writing an image credit. I’ve seen a lot of “image by Pixabay” or “image from Wikipedia,” but these are not acceptable forms of attribution.

When we give credit for any kind of work, we must always state the name of the creator. Pixabay, Wikipedia, Google or Bing are not the creators or copyright owners of works that we find on their sites. If an image is hosted on Pixabay or Wikimedia Commons, it is good to name the site in a credit. But the artist who took the photo or created the graphic is the crucial name that must be on the image.

For images from Wikipedia, most fall under Creative Commons licensing. That requires we know and understand the terms of the license (usually attribution and share alike; sometimes no derivatives and/or no commercial use.) We must also state those terms when we use the image. If an image credit is missing these elements, we haven’t complied with the terms of the license and are technically in copyright violation.

@lovern Images generally become blurry because they are being resized. In all likelihood, the theme used on LiteracyBase is trying to stretch photos that are too narrow. A featured image should be 1200 pixels wide. Most stock images are only about 600 pixels wide. In the case of a celebrity photo or other image that it presented in the portrait or vertical orientation, that might be only 450 pixels wide.

Obviously, if the site is trying to stretch 450 pixels to fit a space 1200 pixels wide, there is going to be some distortion. The lower the resolution of the image, the more that distortion will show. This is why some images are blurry when they are displayed on posts.

June 1, 2016 at 2:11 pm

There was one time my picture did not appear in my blog. I think we have to re size our pictures before using them as our image display.

June 1, 2016 at 5:07 pm

@lovern Nice to see you’ve added a profile pic! Yes, any resizing should be done before we upload. It’s preferable to have an image that is close to the requested size and dimensions, though, if at all possible. Even resizing it ourselves can cause distortions.

June 1, 2016 at 8:17 pm

my images are usually more than 1.5mb in size.

hence, I had to use Mspaint to reduce the size to 1500 pixel because it is way too huge for LB.

So, you might noticed that my image is a bit blurry.

Maybe I should upload at Pinterest before I upload them here, what do you think?

June 2, 2016 at 1:40 am

@peachpurple I recommend using a proper graphics editing suite instead of a Paint program. You can get some good results on free sites like Canva or PicMonkey.

If you just want to crop, resize, and maybe add a bit of text or a frame to your images I would recommend IrfanView. If you want to get fancier and you want a desktop app, I would suggest GIMP. For mobile devices, my daughters highly recommend PicsArt.

I don’t think uploading to Pinterest is helpful, as featured images here have to be uploaded directly rather than embedded from a link. The important thing is to choose a horizontal or landscape orientation, and to be sure the image is 1200 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall.

Resizing from larger to smaller doesn’t usually cause the same kind of distortion as stretching a smaller image to fit a larger space. Your images are always very clear, so I don’t think this is an issue for you.

June 3, 2016 at 8:53 am

You have as many as 60 members in this forum and just 3 have responded so far. Looks like they do not have any issues here. I will remember the size for featured images and thanks for that. But what about photo inserts? I keep them at 512×384. Wonder whether I can increase the size.

And as regards giving credit, Admin right clicks the images and gets the info if it comes from  pixabay. For wikimedia commons I add that attribution link in the section ‘description’

June 3, 2016 at 12:46 pm

@bestwriter Staff recommends 750 x 750 px for the additional images, but then these images are forced into 150 x 150 px upon upload. I have stopped adding inline photos while staff works on this issue.

As for where a credit is supplied, I couldn’t tell you for sure if a “hidden” credit is acceptable for Creative Commons. But it does seem like the decent thing to give the attribution where all readers will see it and not just those who go looking to see if you supplied it…

If your image came from Pixabay, it matters not at all where you put the credit because Pixabay doesn’t require a credit. (Assuming it IS a Pixabay image, and not an illegal Shutterstock image! I’ve seen a few of those lately….)

I’d say by far the best solution would be for LB to add specific image credit fields, as was done on Personal Paper or on Associated Content. One field for each of the pieces of information that makes up a correct image credit.

June 3, 2016 at 12:59 pm

When I am posting most of my pictures, which came from Pixabay by the way, I haven’t experienced having it blurry image but for sure it will happen in the future if the picture I added is quite small. I will bear in mind that I will put the size mentioned by @ruby3881.

June 3, 2016 at 1:57 pm

@grecy095 If you notice any of the images are blurry when you upload, but they weren’t before, it could be they were resized during upload. Most of the Pixabay pics can be downloaded in a variety of sizes, so it’s possible to get bigger sizes if needed.

I think it’s more likely some images are blurry if they were both too small AND also taller than wide. I can’t know for sure what the original size was, but it seems logical that if someone adds an image that is 640 x 460, or even 800 x 640, when the system tries to fit it to 1200 x 600, it’s not going to be easy!

June 3, 2016 at 2:32 pm

@ruby3881 – I have mentioned that I give proper attribution to images I use from creative commons. I have had no issues so far with crediting images.

I wish we had a provision to respond/comment just under the comments/response in question. We have to go right down unless I do not know how to do it

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by  bestwriter.

June 3, 2016 at 9:05 pm

@ruby3881 – You can now upload inline images, we have fixed the problem of 150 x 150 px. Please try and let us know the feedback. You can also embed youtube videos. Just past the embedded code and you may see the video once post is approved.

Thanks – Support

June 4, 2016 at 12:27 am

@support I will definitely try and see if things work better now! Video embeds are working fine, as are embedded article previews. The only issue with them is they show up right at the bottom of the page, instead of wherever they were inserted in the text.

Is there a way to fix that?