Massive help with saving for web? (so new at this, I'm sorry)

[ShelleySocks]

Hi there!

I am so sorry to bother you guys with this, I know it’s been asked before, a lot, but I’m just kind of at my wit’s end here.
-pulled an all-nighter reading about this issue haha-

I have this picture I’ve been working on for an embarassingly long time and am just now finally putting the finishing touches on it.
It’s my first time ever working with digital art and I thought I was producing a picture that I was happy with.

However, yep, when I go to upload it anywhere (Deviantart, Redbubble, Facebook, and Instagram), the image is just awful quality.
I mean, it’s devistating, it doesn’t look anywhere near the original, and I can’t believe anyone would ever want to buy a sticker or a Tshirt with it looking so terrible and grainy (lossy??).

I know that these websites will apply the compression, which leads to that horrible artefacting (sorry if I’ve used the incorrect term), and that exporting it as a PNG (or JPG), and saving it as a certain size will help, but not for me.
I’ve tried everything ranging between 1080 for the widest, to 7,000 pixels, and I’ve changed the DPI from between 72 and like 800 (can you tell I’m desperate haha?).
At it’s original size, it’s between 2500x3500 pixels and 300 DPI.
It’s also set to the default sRBG setting.
Oh and I’ve made sure not to keep resaving the file, it gets exported from the main file every time I go to test it online.
Nothing helps at all and I’m really worried that I just won’t be able to ever try a career as an artist.

Oh, I’ve also tried creating a new document that’s of the correct size, pasting the image, and then resizing to fit the canvas, and that was an utter disaster.
If it helps, the drawing seems to get better results with higher resolution and larger pictures, but at 900 DPI, Krita had just had enough of me and crashed lol.
Plus, many of the videos I’ve watched in my all-night panic-a-thon stated that not much is needed over 300.
And this is all assuming that the file size and DPI even matter when uploading.
I also tried the sharpen filter, but wow, that was even worse than the quality I’m complaining about.

I have this issue even with my sketches when uploading, too.

I mean, this is possible, right?
I see other artists posting such beautiful and high quality stuff on these sites, but mine just can’t even hold a candle to their quality and I wish I knew what I was doing wrong.
Maybe it’s something I’ve done incorrectly or a setting box that was unclicked?

I’m on a Galaxy S Tab Lite, using Krita, on an Android device.
If there’s any further information I can supply, I’ll reply asap.

Thank you so much for reading this and being willing to help me.
I need this to work so bad, I placed a lot of hope on trying to open a Print on Demand shop this year.
I’m just in tears over this.

(PS: not that I think it’s relevant, but the picture has even been corrupted and deleted twice, saved with the zip trick (thank you!), and it just seems so sad it was brought back and saved only to be stopped by not knowing how to upload correctly lol.)
Thanks again and I’m really sorry if I’ve posted this in an incorrect section of the forum.
Me and technology go together like oil and water lol.

[sooz]

Can you give us 2 things:

• a screenshot of your entire workspace with the artwork you’re talking about on the screen. Show everything, including the bottom status bar and have the layers docker visible
• an example demonstrating the problem (so upload the pic that you think looks awful)

[ShelleySocks]

Thank you so much!!

I hope I’ve done this right with the screenshots.
Even their saves aren’t quite right, I noticed when zooming in a little on them.

Sorry they look so awful, it’s so embarassing.

Edit: the last screenshot was of the entire canvas, I forgot to mention that I cropped it to be just Mr. Bumpy before saving and changing the image size and DPI.
Not sure if it makes a difference, but better to be safe and mention it just in case.
Thank you again!

[AhabGreybeard]

The status bar at the bottom does not show the colour profile of the document.
That may be a portrait orientation limitation, I don’t know.
If you do Image → Properties → Image Colour Space tab, what does it say there?

I know that Redbubble recommend that you produce artwork in the CMY/K colour space but that is to help prevent people becoming disappointed (and complaining) when their printed artwork is not as ‘vibrant and punchy’ as it was on their monitor when painting in an RGB/A colour space.
(With krita, it’s recommended that you use the RBG/A default colour profile and use Soft Proofing, Ctrl+Y toggle action, to see approximately what effect that CMYK printing will have.)

When you uploaded to Redbubble, what type of image file was it?

You have banding on the edge gradients. Is that intended or does it just happen like that without you wanting it?

The images look fine to me except that the Redbubble one looks dull.

If you’re printing, all you need is 300dpi but the dpi figure has no meaning unless you specify the size of the printed image.
For upload to websites, the maximum possible size (in pixels) that can actually be seen is the size of whatever monitor it’s being viewed on.
In practice, anything from 1000px, to 2000px wide will look fine on a computer monitor.

[ShelleySocks]

Thank you eo much for the help!!

I took a quick screenshot of the Image Color Space.

I can definitely try to change the image into that format.
So long as it looks decent for Print on Demand, it’d be okay if it never posted right on Facebook or Instagram.

When I uploaded it to Redbubble I used a PNG.
The different sizes of the images didn’t make much of a difference, unfortunately (tried just to try, I wasn’t expecting much of a change).
I tried to click on it, too, to see maybe if it was showing a thumbnail and that the better image would make an appaearance, no luck.

Thank you for letting me know what that issue was called!
Banding was absolutely not intentional.
I had his highlights mixed in with the green of his skin so it wouldn’t be as jarring as it looks in the upload.
You can really tell on his legs and eyelids and fingers, oh man.
Might there be anyway to fix it?

I had to double check the Redbubble screenshot, but it definitely uploads that dark.
It’s silly, this picture was so bright it hurt my eyes after a spell.

I also double checked with the lower image size, but no go, still has the bad quality, unfortunately.

Weird, it will post absolutely perfect on Internet Explorer Facebook.
But it’s all I’ve managed to figure out at this point, unfortunately.

[AhabGreybeard]

@ShelleySocks

it will post absolutely perfect on Internet Explorer Facebook.

And I assume that they look good on this forum too.
It’s the Redbubble website where it looks bad?
There is a possibility that Redbubble convert to CMYK to emphasise what your image will look like when printed. You’d have to contact Redbubble to find out about that.

If you go to Image → Properties → Softproofing tab and make sure it has these settings:

Actually, since you have lots of green and some red in your image, change the Gamut Warning colour to bright blue, so it’s obvious.
Then press Ctrl+Y to toggle softproofing on and off.
Does that make it look like the Redbubble site image?

Can you upload a screenshot of your image in krita with softproofing active?

You’ve shown screenshots of other web services so far.
Can you Export a .png image and upload it here?

The banding on the edges can be dealt with later. That would be better as a separate help topic to keep this topic limited to colour spaces, file types and sizes etc.

[ShelleySocks]

I’m so worried to see if the PNG will actually post here lol.
Fingers crossed!
It’s also not totally finished on the ends of his toes, excuse my mess.
This is 300 DPI and not resized from the crop with the Softproofing active:

And I noticed that it was already set to CMYK before changing anything.

I did two saves on the Softproofing tab, one with it checked and one without.
Still no luck, but it does look a little better when uploading to Redbubble.

Bright blue and Softproofing on (without being uploaded on anything first).

And the bright blue without:

Yeah, it’s definitely not just Redbubble that I’m experiencing this issue.
Though Redbubble is the only one that’s posting dark.
I’m so sorry to be a pain!
It’s like uploading it at all, almost anywhere, causes the quality to suffer.
And they all look pretty much the same across Facebook, Instagram, Deviantart, and Redbubble in terms of that banding and the low quality look.
Here are also the Redbubble screenshots:

Still on the darker side, but a little better on his problem areas, I think?

I think I also posted a screenshot of the PNG export settings, just in case, but I lost it in the text lol.

Thank you again for all of your help, I cant express how much this means.

PS: no quality loss when posting here, you were spot on!!
Whew!
That feels hopeful!

[AhabGreybeard]

There is a small complication - your uploaded images all download as .jpg images.
This is probably because the software for this forum converts them to .jpg to reduce the storage space required. This is understandable because the forum has to store a very large number of images.

Despite that, when I download your images as .jpg and examine them in detail, they look fine to me and have plenty of detail.
I’m disregarding the edge banding which is a separate subject and should be a separate topic.

Instagram, Facebook, etc do perform some compression and other image fiddling activity to reduce their storage requirements and to give fast downloads so you can’t trust them to present an image as you originally created it.
I’ve no idea why the Redbubble screenshot is so dark and you’d have to contact them about that.

When you Exported as .png, you had ‘Force Convert to sRGB’ enabled and I believe that @Takiro has said that setting can cause problems with some applications/websites so it would be good to have that unchecked.
The image is already in sRGB colour profile so it does seem pointless.

As for softproofing, you have a misunderstanding of what it’s about:

@ShelleySocks

I did two saves on the Softproofing tab, one with it checked and one without.

That is not what softproofing is about. It does not affect the image or the Exported image.
It’s to locally, on your monitor only, show you what the image would look like if it was printed, in this case using a CMYK printing process with a ‘Chemical Proof’ profile (a common colour printing profile).
You activate softproofing by pressing Ctrl+Y then you will see the image converted to CMYK, locally only, on your monitor.
Then you press Ctrl+Y again to go back to normal viewing mode.

Note: I forgot to tell you to also turn on ‘Out Of Gamut Warnings’ , Ctrl+Shift+Y toggle,
When I remembered to do that, most of your image is out of gamut, meaning lots and lots of blue, so you may as well turn that warning off. You’ll see the muddied colours effectively telling you that it’s out of the CMYK range of possible colours anyway.

I’ve tried CMYK softproofing on your downloaded image and those bright greens are very badly muddied. Please press Ctrl+Y to see for yourself.
It may be that sticker printers use a special plastic/vinyl process that is much better than standard Chemical Proof printing. It may be that t-shirt printers also have special inks that are better than standard CMYK and the softproofing is too pessimistic.
I don’t know because printing is a specialist subject that can become very complicated and require experience to fully understand what will happen.

What you can do is try boosting saturation and value (with softproofing turned on to see the effect) in order to get the colours more as you want them. I’ve no idea if that would be any good.

As I noted earlier, I don’t see any ‘quality’ problems with the images you uploaded in your last reply.
As for image size requirements, I think you should read the advice from Redbubble to see what they say.
Also, for printing, I believe that the design should be on a transparent background so it can easily be printed on a t-shirt of any colour, unless you actually want it to have a rectangular coloured background.
There are also special considerations for sticker artwork regarding the edges which Redbubble should have somewhere on their website.

[ShelleySocks]

Thank you again for the information!!

I’m definitely going to be reading up on that edge banding today!
It would be amazing if that was the issue and not it uploading as a poor quality image.
Just my lack of experience believing it was something else and getting anxious for nothing lol.
(I’m starting to think actually that it is my fault after all)

I’ll absolutely contact Redbubble today about the dark images.
Thank you for the suggestion!
I’ll also untick “Force Convert to sRGB”, as well.

Oh my gosh, I’m a ding-ding, I’m so sorry about that (Softproofing).
I went on my compurter and I do absolutely see what you mean, oh my gosh, what a disaster!
I definitely don’t want to risk that all coming through on something I’m trying to sell.
Do you think (oh no lol) that I should recolor the image wiith that in mind?
I cannot stand that muddy look!

Hey, I’ll absolutely try boosting saturation and value!
Maybe it’ll work.
I’m so bummed that so much happened to it between coloring it and uploading.

Oh and definitely want that background transparent!
I had actually read about someone recommending trying a transparent background to help with image quality, so I’ll get right on that!
Thank you so much for all the trouble everyone went to to help me!