Heads up for fanartists
Okay, found out two things today that I know will be helpful for fanartists. If you don't use photobucket, the second one doesn't apply to you but the first one does.
Whenever you post an image to LJ, whether you change your layout, post art in unlocked posts, upload new userpics, add sidebars, post unlocked voting in communities, post unlocked pimps in communities, anything image related in public space, it comes up on the LJ RSS Feed. And apparently now, there are several websites that repost the feed, which just links your images. An icon I had in an icontest was hotlinked on the site fuzzysquid and toothpaste for dinner. My views went from a few hundred to over 25K.
To opt out of the feed:
Make sure you are logged into LJ:
Go to the command console: http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console/
Enter this command exactly:
set latest_optout yes
Hit execute.
This is just to opt YOUR JOURNAL out of the feed. If you want to opt a community that you own out of the feed:
Make sure you are logged into LJ:
Go to the command console: http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console/
Enter this command exactly:
set for communityname latest_optout yes
Hit execute.
However, I know for sure that it WILL NOT opt you out if someone else posts say, an icon in an icontest voting if the post is unlocked. Owners need to opt their communities out themselves or lock all posts.
And the second thing has to do with photobucket. Apparently, they are compressing images, even as small as icons, as they transition to high res capabilities. That means your art will come out blurry.
From them via iconrants
We run compression on our site in order to balance the cost of bandwidth and storage while providing a variety of useful features and overall site performance for our users.
Within the next few weeks we will include a "High Resolution" setting in the upload tab that will allow for storage of the high resolution version of your image, still, you may notice that the album displayed and linked images are the compressed versions. In this scenario, downloading the image from your Photobucket account should download the high resolution version.
Even though you should expect compression to occur on our site in general, you may want to try to re-upload any images you are concerned about using the resolution settings (e.g. 1024 x768) instead of the file-size limit settings (e.g. 1MB). This may preserve the quality closest to the original in the short-term.
The solution seems to be, if you don't already, to save ALL images in .png form because when they are compressed, it doesn't effect the quality as much as it does when a .jpg is compressed.
If anyone has any other information that can be helpful on this post, please let me know ASAP! I don't have all the information, just what I have found with a little digging this morning. Thanks.
Whenever you post an image to LJ, whether you change your layout, post art in unlocked posts, upload new userpics, add sidebars, post unlocked voting in communities, post unlocked pimps in communities, anything image related in public space, it comes up on the LJ RSS Feed. And apparently now, there are several websites that repost the feed, which just links your images. An icon I had in an icontest was hotlinked on the site fuzzysquid and toothpaste for dinner. My views went from a few hundred to over 25K.
To opt out of the feed:
Make sure you are logged into LJ:
Go to the command console: http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console/
Enter this command exactly:
set latest_optout yes
Hit execute.
This is just to opt YOUR JOURNAL out of the feed. If you want to opt a community that you own out of the feed:
Make sure you are logged into LJ:
Go to the command console: http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console/
Enter this command exactly:
set for communityname latest_optout yes
Hit execute.
However, I know for sure that it WILL NOT opt you out if someone else posts say, an icon in an icontest voting if the post is unlocked. Owners need to opt their communities out themselves or lock all posts.
And the second thing has to do with photobucket. Apparently, they are compressing images, even as small as icons, as they transition to high res capabilities. That means your art will come out blurry.
From them via iconrants
We run compression on our site in order to balance the cost of bandwidth and storage while providing a variety of useful features and overall site performance for our users.
Within the next few weeks we will include a "High Resolution" setting in the upload tab that will allow for storage of the high resolution version of your image, still, you may notice that the album displayed and linked images are the compressed versions. In this scenario, downloading the image from your Photobucket account should download the high resolution version.
Even though you should expect compression to occur on our site in general, you may want to try to re-upload any images you are concerned about using the resolution settings (e.g. 1024 x768) instead of the file-size limit settings (e.g. 1MB). This may preserve the quality closest to the original in the short-term.
The solution seems to be, if you don't already, to save ALL images in .png form because when they are compressed, it doesn't effect the quality as much as it does when a .jpg is compressed.
If anyone has any other information that can be helpful on this post, please let me know ASAP! I don't have all the information, just what I have found with a little digging this morning. Thanks.