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Post by Toto Gamboa on May 17, 2011 8:57:56 GMT
Shameless plug here. But photographers like us have been so particular with how our photos show up in other's LCD screen that we invest with stuff like monitor calibrators but unknown to many, some of our ISPs do something we photographers don't like. Test if your ISP is one of those. However, the real issue is that we dont know if all our viewers out there see all the pixels that we see. To know more on how I plan to avoid this problem, check out my blog on this item: totogamboa.com/2011/05/17/check-if-your-internet-service-provider-degrades-photo-quality/Hope this helps!
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Post by Mark Itol on May 17, 2011 11:26:34 GMT
Good point, Toto. SmartBro Wireless always does that. But I don't think this is really an "issue" since you proof your images on your local machine anyway before uploading, so you know its quality is up to your standards. Kinda analogous to you processing your photos on a properly calibrated IPS and your viewers viewing them on uncalibrated monitors (in this case, having ISPs that degrade image quality).
BTW, can't seem to see any visual difference between the images on your post, though the secure version is a few KB larger than the non-secure version.
Not sure if there are a lot of good image hosting sites (for photography) that offer SSL. The ones I know (Smugmug, Flickr, PBase, PhotoBucket) don't seem to offer such (but I may be mistaken).
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Post by Romy Ocon on May 17, 2011 13:02:21 GMT
BTW, can't seem to see any visual difference between the images on your post, though the secure version is a few KB larger than the non-secure version. On my IPS display, they look visually identical too, Toto.
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Post by Toto Gamboa on May 17, 2011 13:12:16 GMT
Hi Mark, the test you just run is basically composed of a single file hosted twice on the same page on my blog. the first image goes thru SSL (you would notice that the source URL is in https). the 2nd image is the normal http. by using SSL, once your browser request it for download from a host server, the file is encrypted in transit. the image only gets decrypted once it has completely downloaded to your browser. In an encrypted (secure )state, no one will be able tamper it on transit or the entire downloading is compromised. that is how SSL behaves. WIth the test, since I uploaded a single file only, you should be able to see no difference in file size and visual quality (unless something tampered the file). The second image you see is unsecured so that gave the ISP the opportunity to hijack the image, run it thru some quality and size reduction server, then it showed the file back to you on a degraded state. ISPs defintely are doing this to save on bandwidth. So you really dont have control with the quality of your photos via unsecured line. In my Smartbro wireless, the 232KB got reduced to around 33KB. That is a lot of pixels lost that I can't see. Globe visibility is even worst. It reduced my file to around 12KB. You would see Mastah Romy's photos in their pixelized form Bottomline here is that, we dont get an assurance that our photos are viewed in its purest/original form as we intended. The degree of degradation can vary depending on how much bytes an ISP wants to reduce to save on bandwidth. We can only ensure our photos' integrity if we can defeat those image size reducers employed by the ISPs. one of the ways is via SSL as shown in the test I provided. There may be some other ways but this is the simplest I have thought. THe only problem is that, our usual image hosting sites dont offer this. I hosted the photos in our company's webhost.
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Post by Toto Gamboa on May 17, 2011 13:13:38 GMT
BTW, can't seem to see any visual difference between the images on your post, though the secure version is a few KB larger than the non-secure version. On my IPS display, they look visually identical too, Toto. It should be that way mastah if your ISP is not tampering the file in transit. check the file sizes if both are the same too.
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Post by Mark Itol on May 17, 2011 13:27:27 GMT
Hi Mark, the test you just run is basically composed of a single file hosted twice on the same page on my blog. the first image goes thru SSL (you would notice that the source URL is in https). the 2nd image is the normal http. by using SSL, once your browser request it for download from a host server, the file is encrypted in transit. the image only gets decrypted once it has completely downloaded to your browser. In an encrypted (secure )state, no one will be able tamper it on transit or the entire downloading is compromised. that is how SSL behaves. WIth the test, since I uploaded a single file only, you should be able to see no difference in file size and visual quality (unless something tampered the file). The second image you see is unsecured so that gave the ISP the opportunity to hijack the image, run it thru some quality and size reduction server, then it showed the file back to you on a degraded state. ISPs defintely are doing this to save on bandwidth. Exactly what my browser console is showing -- on the page showing both images, the secure version is at 227.21KB while the non-secure version is at 226.67KB. That's interesting. I downloaded the two images (I hope you don't mind) twice using different approaches, and got 227KB on both. Both are indistinguishable as far as my eyes can tell. I observe degradation (jagged edges) when viewing other images (in the 800px+ size) on my connection.
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Post by Toto Gamboa on May 17, 2011 13:40:12 GMT
Mark, I think your smartbro is fine. the 1KB size difference must be those meta data that were stripped off the file but the entire image data is intact thus you see no difference So now we can say that there are still a part of smartbro that are not to quality degradation. THis is possible as each connection that we have could be routed to different locations in their networks.
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Post by Clemn A. Macasiano Jr. on May 18, 2011 5:23:14 GMT
Good thing you brought this up Toto. Thanks for sharing. The draw back will only matter on images intended to be display on web. Should there's a degradation of quality. But in my humble opinion proper display ( IPS ) is still indispensable in Photo Processing an image for printing. Hoping for Santa to be generous by the end of the year " IPS ". As you have said in FB our ISP is hiding something from the consumer. BAD business practice.
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