after some years of working various image boards and posting content. ive found most main social media sites suck for any kinda art preservation due to either compressing or down scaling the image.

twatter X: converts png files to jpg and compresses them by default with a limit of 4096x4096 ive heard the compression limit can be removed via a setting in the person thats uploading profile
deviantart defaults to 1280 jpg and or png unless the artist set it to original.
pixiv requires censorship. but doesnt have limits nor compressed jpg or png files.
unless its an animated image and required the tool box plug in download but the image is still inferior cause pixiv does compress the frames some.

mastodon based sites like social, pawoo, or baraag for example compress jpg by 50% but doesnt convert png files to jpg. but has a limit 1.1 1440x1440 or 2880x2880 depending on what kernel their running. these limits arnt bound pixel wise. (example 2160x3840)
furafinity has a limit as of recently roughly 2000x2000
inkbunny doesnt have any limit im aware of but does non destructive optimizations to the file.

bluesky is the worst of them all they convert to jpg and also downscale or upscales to 2000 pixels making you think you have a false higher quality image. there is a way to grab a png unlike twatter
but the artist would have had to post a png otherwise you are still getting a jpg just converted to png.
newgrounds is ok if you post one at a time. otherwise child posts on the same post are converted to webp files and downscaled sometimes.

occasionally if i find art i really like i ask the artist if they can send out the originals but that may or may not work out there a 50% chance they will send the files along with permission to post. or if the artist has a public archive.

and i get that storage cost money but most of the sites i mentioned are old and should be able to afford it. and i know some artists downscale cause there on subscribestar or patreon which i totally get.

Another thing i dont understand is why people choose furafinity and twitter 10 to 1 over inkbunny. as far as i can tell inkbunny is superior in everyway. but i digress...
i just bothers me. anyways thanks for reading my civilized rant lol. surely im not the only person that thinks this.

catchoftheday said:
ive heard the compression limit can be removed via a setting in the person thats uploading profile

Since when

catchoftheday said:
there is a way to grab a png unlike twatter

Also since when
Bluesky serves up a jpeg regardless of what the original format is
Like this was a png when uploaded, and the output is a jpeg

catchoftheday said:
furafinity has a limit as of recently roughly 2000x2000

About 3.6 megapixels (1920x1920) for normal users. You need to pay for FA+ to have a higher limit, which I don't remember what it is but it's still not great.

catchoftheday said:
inkbunny doesnt have any limit im aware of but does non destructive optimizations to the file.

Inkbunny doesn't allow humans, even if the image contains furries too.

catchoftheday said:
newgrounds is ok if you post one at a time. otherwise child posts on the same post are converted to webp files and downscaled sometimes.

I thought I read they fixed that recently (only for new posts, not preexisting ones). Though they do have content restrictions though, even worse than FA, IIRC.

catchoftheday said:
Another thing i dont understand is why people choose furafinity and twitter 10 to 1 over inkbunny. as far as i can tell inkbunny is superior in everyway.

Inkbunny allows cub porn, which causes some people to avoid the site like the plague.

Personally I find Itaku.ee to be one of the better alternatives, insofar as they don't seem to have a size limit, don't recompress PNGs, and make it easy to get the full size image. I'm not exactly sure about their content policies though, but it doesn't seem to be worse than Newgrounds.

donovan_dmc said:
Since when

Also since when
Bluesky serves up a jpeg regardless of what the original format is
Like this was a png when uploaded, and the output is a jpeg

this is just from observation so im not 100% sure how some artist on twitter are able to post in higher quality's wile some arnt. the artist impstripe is a good example. the images he post to twitter are only slightly smaller (by roughly 100kb) to the counter part images on his newgronds. ive heard its a setting in the profile that allows higher quality uploads.

as for bluesky for example

right clicking and opening the image in a new tab you get this
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:hlfffjzstubxzwgqb62umcpd/bafkreie5khuu736txt3swfvqqkyrxnyhlc7nthgd5kpzquv54ciccfjmce@jpg

if you change the jpg to png it will load a higher quality image some time. most of the time is doesn't. this is one of the rare instances this worked. i usually avoid bluesky cause of how images are handled.
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:hlfffjzstubxzwgqb62umcpd/bafkreie5khuu736txt3swfvqqkyrxnyhlc7nthgd5kpzquv54ciccfjmce@png

heres the twitter equivilant which is sized the same as blusky so it didnt change the file resolution. but the file remained compressed.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJwtvhbXUAEiJ7g?format=jpg&name=orig

watsit said:
About 3.6 megapixels (1920x1920) for normal users. You need to pay for FA+ to have a higher limit, which I don't remember what it is but it's still not great.

Inkbunny doesn't allow humans, even if the image contains furries too.

I thought I read they fixed that recently (only for new posts, not preexisting ones). Though they do have content restrictions though, even worse than FA, IIRC.

Inkbunny allows cub porn, which causes some people to avoid the site like the plague.

Personally I find Itaku.ee to be one of the better alternatives, insofar as they don't seem to have a size limit, don't recompress PNGs, and make it easy to get the full size image. I'm not exactly sure about their content policies though, but it doesn't seem to be worse than Newgrounds.

ah i didnt know there was a paywall on furafinity. thats makes scene.

i knew inkbunny didnt allow loli and shota i didnt know it was also adult characters too.

on newgrounds its only some posts that are small so that make sence that it was a bug?

i knew inkbunny allowed cub. tbh is dosnt bother me a drawing is a drawing. nothing more or less. but i can understand why some would avoid it for that reason.

i like Itaku.ee but i dont think alot of people know about it.

catchoftheday said:
ive heard its a setting in the profile that allows higher quality uploads.

I'm pretty certain that isn't a thing, twitter just doesn't compress images with certain factors that are unknown

catchoftheday said:
if you change the jpg to png it will load a higher quality image some time. most of the time is doesn't. this is one of the rare instances this worked. i usually avoid bluesky cause of how images are handled.
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:hlfffjzstubxzwgqb62umcpd/bafkreie5khuu736txt3swfvqqkyrxnyhlc7nthgd5kpzquv54ciccfjmce@png

Considering that image is exactly 2000px in height and the typical "original" url returns a much smaller image (897x1143), I'd be more than willing to bet that's upscaled

donovan_dmc said:
I'm pretty certain that isn't a thing, twitter just doesn't compress images with certain factors that are unknown

Considering that image is exactly 2000px in height and the typical "original" url returns a much smaller image (897x1143), I'd be more than willing to bet that's upscaled

After examining it. you're right. it is upscaled. i swear the arses that program these sites...

Ok wait a sec. how are you grabbing the original file like that from bluesky? does this trick work for twitter too?

catchoftheday said:
After examining it. you're right. it is upscaled. i swear the arses that program these sites...

Ok wait a sec. how are you grabbing the original file like that from bluesky? does this trick work for twitter too?

howto:sites and sources - a to h#bluesky might shed some light on that

The recent changes to FA restricting resolution on uploads for normal users drove me nuts. To add insult to injury, some of my (commissioned) art got taken down recently, without any notice or way to appeal to Furaffinity, just gone from my gallery and I didn't notice until (probably) months later. Poof.

I wish I could just upload all my commissioned art here, to have it all in one place without worrying about compression or monthly/annual fees, but with how many artists are DNP the only solution for my own personal art preservation seems to be physical backups. Everything has downsides... sucks.

snpthecat said:
howto:sites and sources - a to h#bluesky might shed some light on that

Ooh, saving that. Thanks.

It's really awful. Every site has a downside. Some butcher uploads, that's bad enough. But then you have sites that don't work with reverse image search like instagram. Sites whose layout is just incompatible with art, and awful to browse. Sites with vague, capriciously enforced rules like deviantart and twitter. Monetization being held hostage. And the communities- full of hate, harassment, politics and drama, every time I see English it's a fight of some kind, it's embarassing. It is a terrible time to be an artist, and it has nothing to do with AI either, it's the businesses you have to rely on to do anything online.

catchoftheday said:
inkbunny doesnt have any limit im aware of but does non destructive optimizations to the file.

Inkbunny optimizations are not always lossless. The site removes metadata that affects the color display of an image, which affects both JPEGs and PNGs in practice. This is efficient from a design standpoint, and the vast majority of users will never notice, but it makes it less-than-optimal for raw archival.

The best well-known furry sites outside of e621 for image archival are SoFurry, Itaku, and Weasyl. SoFurry's older interface and lack of viewer engagement mechanisms is off-putting for many users, but its image storage is the best of the three and can serve very high quality images with no compression or optimization. Weasyl has historically had a lower resolution limit than SoFurry but likewise serves images without modifications, and Itaku is in a similar boat as Weasyl with higher-resolution and filesize uploads gated behind providing monetary support for the site to remain operational.

song said:
Inkbunny optimizations are not always lossless. The site removes metadata that affects the color display of an image, which affects both JPEGs and PNGs in practice. This is efficient from a design standpoint, and the vast majority of users will never notice, but it makes it less-than-optimal for raw archival.

Does that affect all images hosted on the site, or only a select few?

song said:
Inkbunny optimizations are not always lossless. The site removes metadata that affects the color display of an image, which affects both JPEGs and PNGs in practice. This is efficient from a design standpoint, and the vast majority of users will never notice, but it makes it less-than-optimal for raw archival.

The best well-known furry sites outside of e621 for image archival are SoFurry, Itaku, and Weasyl. SoFurry's older interface and lack of viewer engagement mechanisms is off-putting for many users, but its image storage is the best of the three and can serve very high quality images with no compression or optimization. Weasyl has historically had a lower resolution limit than SoFurry but likewise serves images without modifications, and Itaku is in a similar boat as Weasyl with higher-resolution and filesize uploads gated behind providing monetary support for the site to remain operational.

nice! i will keep that noted.

This stuff is the reason e6 is the only site I upload to anymore, even though people tell me not to. It has the least severe disadvantages in my eyes. FA doesn't allow cartoony art styles anymore, Inkbunny is weird with its interface and seemingly arbitrary content policies (I don't draw humans, but not allowing even a trace of them is a little extreme), Tumblr doesn't allow NSFW, Twitter is a toxic cesspool that nearly destroyed my mental health, etc.

I tried Itaku, but even it didn't work out because it suffers from "economies of scale"; not enough people use it, so the chance of anyone actually running into artwork I post there is almost zero.

aged like fine wine.

Indeed

lendrimujina said:
Tumblr doesn't allow NSFW

I think they reverted that at some point.

popoto said:
I think they reverted that at some point.

Much too late to bring the crazies back in and allow the site to be an Internet quarantine again.

popoto said:
I think they reverted that at some point.

Not really. There are some exceptions for some art, but even that tends to be "until you piss us off."

popoto said:
I think they reverted that at some point.

But then later on they decided to train AI on your data.

popoto said:
I think they reverted that at some point.

Tumblr only allows 'artistic nudity' i.e. nude characters showing their body and that's it. Any depiction of sexual activity is not permitted.

you can get the correct image file from newground
open the image in a new tab
change the webp file name at the end of the address to the correct file
usually png, sometimes jpg
(if its not the correct one, you get a 404, then try another)

you get the file as is the artist uploaded it

catchoftheday said:
bluesky is the worst of them all they convert to jpg and also downscale or upscales to 2000 pixels making you think you have a false higher quality image. there is a way to grab a png unlike twatter
but the artist would have had to post a png otherwise you are still getting a jpg just converted to png.

janitor "Tarrgon" recently mentioned this interesting thing about bluesky

bluesky stores the non-artificially upscaled jpg up to 2000px for either axis at (usually) 100 quality
small userscript to retrieve that file when opening a bluesky image:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         BSky Redirect
// @namespace    http://tampermonkey.net/
// @version      2024-05-26
// @description  Redirect you to the best version available from bluesky
// @author       Tarrgon
// @match        https://cdn.bsky.app/*
// @icon         https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?sz=64&domain=bsky.app
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

(async function () {
  'use strict';

  let url = window.location.pathname.split("/")

  if (url.length < 6) return

  let did = url[4]
  let cid = url[5].slice(0, url[5].lastIndexOf("@"))

  if (did && cid) {
    window.location.href = `https://bsky.social/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=${did}&cid=${cid}`
  }
})();

Basically you take the shitty url: https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:3o7fdnaufz6tseuw4ouc2nik/bafkreiefizwu2zarhr4pmztnl2anrnspm7vczqnth4y5r4btjyqwnpfycu@jpeg

extract these two parts:
did:plc:3o7fdnaufz6tseuw4ouc2nik
bafkreiefizwu2zarhr4pmztnl2anrnspm7vczqnth4y5r4btjyqwnpfycu

And go here: https://bsky.social/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:3o7fdnaufz6tseuw4ouc2nik&cid=bafkreiefizwu2zarhr4pmztnl2anrnspm7vczqnth4y5r4btjyqwnpfycu

If you open https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:3o7fdnaufz6tseuw4ouc2nik/bafkreiefizwu2zarhr4pmztnl2anrnspm7vczqnth4y5r4btjyqwnpfycu@jpeg you'll find a 2000x2000 artificially upscaled pixel art piece

here however: https://bsky.social/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:3o7fdnaufz6tseuw4ouc2nik&cid=bafkreiefizwu2zarhr4pmztnl2anrnspm7vczqnth4y5r4btjyqwnpfycu the original 420x420 resolution

It's something we can automate on e6's side
it'd be really nice if we did
Just when you input a bsky link, change it to the better version

after staff are less busy with the whole recent rule change, it would be cool if it was implemented. just wanted to post this here to remind its a thing that exists.

personally on the whole topic of this thread, my recommendation to artists is to post on a few of the big sites people actually browse for reach (twitter, furaffinity I guess?), but keep some original res preserving site in the background to help archivists be able to find non compressed images (eg e6 if youre bothered with tagging, itaku)

lendrimujina said:
This stuff is the reason e6 is the only site I upload to anymore, even though people tell me not to. It has the least severe disadvantages in my eyes. FA doesn't allow cartoony art styles anymore, Inkbunny is weird with its interface and seemingly arbitrary content policies (I don't draw humans, but not allowing even a trace of them is a little extreme), Tumblr doesn't allow NSFW, Twitter is a toxic cesspool that nearly destroyed my mental health, etc.

I tried Itaku, but even it didn't work out because it suffers from "economies of scale"; not enough people use it, so the chance of anyone actually running into artwork I post there is almost zero.

Isn't that kind of circular reasoning? I mean, I'm not going to go all Field of Dreams here, but if the other choices kettled you into less and less choices, it's kind of inevitable.

snpthecat said:
Does that affect all images hosted on the site, or only a select few?

Late response, but it only affects some of them since only some images have metadata that affects visual information.