Last week I released a video about how to resize your images for the web
and looked at various formats, profiles and free and paid software to do so.
This week I'm going to show you how to make your images
pop for social media platforms such as Instagram.
Thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this video. Use
coupon code KARL to get a 10% discount. So as we covered it last week, in this
video we don't need to cover how to resize your images.
Instead, we're going to look at ways to make them shine
on social media. Instagram is one of those social media platforms that is
great for photographers. It provides an instant way
to publish your work and try to grow a following. It also
provides an easy way for your audience to stay in touch
with what you are producing but it's important that we consider the current
limitations of the platform in terms of what and how it is displayed.
Generally speaking, it's a mobile-based platform with the majority of people
viewing it on their smartphones or tablets. This is, of course, most likely
when not plugged into the charger and most likely sat down at an indoor
location, such as home, a cafe, or a waiting area,
rather than walking down the street on a bright day.
Immediately from this we can deduce that the majority of the viewers will be
looking at your images on a mobile platform,
something like 70% of viewing on mobile phones.
So if we look at the percentage of mobile phone sales we can deduce the
type of devices mostly used for viewing. Apple have about
25% of the market share, Samsung 31% and Huawei about 12%.
The rest is divided up in similar portions amongst many brands
so let's focus on Apple and Samsung devices
and compare the visual appearance of Instagram as an
app on those phones. Here indoors, all three of these Apple devices
appear very similar and they all already appear more contrasty and brighter than
the same image displayed on a calibrated monitor.
I've checked two other Samsung devices compared to the
Apples and i have another one here and like the others
they appear about the same quite similar to the image on the calibrated monitor
under normal brightness and viewing conditions.
We also checked them with the brightness manually set to around 70%.
Now, from that very simplified test it would indicate that viewing on a mobile
device will already produce a very similar
version of the image compared to how you see the same image
on a calibrated monitor, on the Samsung, but a slightly more
contrasty and brighter version on the Apple devices.
In fact, the Apple devices also looked almost
identical in contrast and brightness to various
MacBook Pro screens that we checked. So the bottom line here,
is that you would think actually maybe you don't need to adjust your images
any further for instagram than you already do for your website
and to be perfectly honest I often don't. I simply try to get the correct exposure
and contrast based on a calibrated monitor
and then I upload the same image to my website
and to Instagram. One of the major problems with Instagram
is the amount of compression applied to the images that you
upload which means that no matter what you load to Instagram,
it is going to be resized to about 1080 pixels
wide or up to 1350 pixels high on a vertical edge or vertical
shaped image. But the great thing is that it's going to downsize them
automatically anyway, so as long as you don't upload lower
resolutions than this, then you'll be fine but be aware that
sometimes you may decide to re-crop your image within
Instagram before you actually post it. As I choose 2500 pixels on the longest
edge for all of my website images i don't
make any further adjustments to them for size
I simply post my 2500 pixel images directly to Instagram knowing that they
will be downsized. The next thing unfortunately is
compression, this is the amount of squashing Instagram applies to reduce
the data size taken up on their servers. To do this
they use a heavy amount of compression, a bit like
taking a high quality image and then saving it at quality
zero in jpeg format. Well it's not actually quite that bad
but often when you explore the images they do look like they've been
compressed to equivalent of around five or six in jpeg format. So what this
means is you shouldn't be uploading images to
Instagram that you've already heavily compressed
otherwise things are just going to get worse.
I'd say it's acceptable to upload a level 10 or
9 compression, first-generation jpeg but do not go any lower. So if I'm
deciding to compress to level 6 or 7 for my website
I'll also export a level 10 compression jpeg
for Instagram. Unfortunately, we have no control over the size or compression
that the images end up on Instagram but you will help yourself
with color by using an SRGB profile, so although I'd recommend
working on your images in Adobe RGB during the post-production stage,
your final jpegs destined for web and social media
should be exported with an SRGB profile. Now although we have already deduced
that the images on phones and tablets are mostly already more contrasty and
brighter than on a calibrated desktop display,
that doesn't mean to say you can't give them a little
bit more pop, just to make them come alive,
or to compensate for the times when people might be viewing
outdoors or in brighter conditions. It's also important to remember that
viewing anything is perceptual, that is our perception of the image is
largely based on surrounding information and the environment. So
things can look very different if we're holding the phone against the
ground or holding it up with a window behind,
or in an environment with lots of potential reflections off of the screen
from top lighting or from surrounding windows.
Now many of you may be thinking... Okay great I'll sharpen up my images in
Photoshop or Lightroom and I can add a bit of saturation,
however, I wouldn't recommend that, because you
are not seeing the image in its final resting place, that is on
the phone, or tablet on Instagram. I'd suggest you
actually use the in-camera photo editing tools or the
ones within Instagram itself. Now by this I don't
mean by applying those horrible filters, which
thankfully have seemed to gone out of fashion,
but I mean by using the image editing tools.
As an example with these images we uploaded the standard version
as it would be on my website and we also uploaded another version with some
slight tweaks. These tweaks on Instagram were where I
leave the image in normal mode, then I select edit and I apply 10%
saturation, 25% sharpen and around 20% structure,
which is essentially a local contrast control.
Now you may need to play around with these settings depending on the image
that you're posting but they'll give you a good starting
point. Well I hope you found that information
useful, thanks for watching.
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