MetaFilter profile pictures seem disappointingly low-res

April 3, 2025 10:04 AM

I was excited to upload my new profile picture after I found this lovely photo of some strawberries on Unsplash. Now my excitement has turned to ash in my mouth as the beauty of the photo is lost in the uploading, reduced to a blurry thumbnail. Surely the cost of hosting profile images at a better quality can't be that high?

Here's the full-res version of my profile picture: https://i.ibb.co/Mkg7Y4HL/anastasia-zhenina-V9g1kw-Nsxwc-unsplash-Copy.jpg (I'll call this version #1.)

Here's the version I resized to be under 500 KB so I could upload it to the site: https://i.ibb.co/JjnTMbzv/anastasia-zhenina-V9g1kw-Nsxwc-unsplash-Copy-Custom.jpg (I'll call this version #2.)

And here's how my profile picture actually looks on the site after uploading: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/mefi.profile--s3v2/251489.jpg (I'll call this version #3.)

posted by fruitdroid to Feature Requests at 10:04 AM (19 comments total)

I have used and carried over the same shitty PNG of my profile picture for approaching two decades now across all websites, so I had never noticed this!

probably something that can either be changed, or else made explicit via some help text, in the profile editing section, in the site rebuild.
posted by Kybard at 10:25 AM on April 3 [1 favorite]

idk dude all the pics look fine to me
posted by phunniemee at 10:43 AM on April 3 [2 favorites]

a lot of avatars on websites are like this, with image restrictions on resolution, size and type. could they be expanded? probably.

i myself like to try to use the limitations as something of a "writing prompt" so to speak. what's the more personally pleasing image i can come up with to fit within the boundaries of the image limits.

if i were doing that pic i would get more aggressive with the cropping. imo the image is really about the berries, not the background, so i would crop out all that and just end up with mostly berries and some of that bowl pattern. i also think "texture" pics are great for this, where i'd crop down even smaller so that the image is nothing but the berries themselves, with the image edges cutting through the berries, suggesting an infinite plane of lovely strawberries

this is what i ended up with, 500x500 jpg at about 282kb, using ifrfanview, 100% jpg quality
posted by glonous keming at 11:23 AM on April 3 [3 favorites]

Those are some good looking berries.
posted by Lemkin at 11:55 AM on April 3

glonous keming: but then you still have to upload the image and let it get resized and compressed again. See the difference between version #2 (the version I uploaded) and version #3 (the version that ended up on the site).

I tried uploading the image you shared to test it out, but it’s 637 KB, so the site will not accept it.
posted by fruitdroid at 12:13 PM on April 3

fruitdroid, have you seen the feature request form for the new site? This seems like a really reasonable request.
posted by mittens at 12:33 PM on April 3 [3 favorites]

idk dude all the pics look fine to me

between Hank Hill's hotdog.jpg and Fenton and Horse Kicks Tree, Farts on Dogs I have no lack of media for my funeral
posted by ginger.beef at 12:37 PM on April 3

I'm not sure what you're expecting in 140x140 pixels. I've been working with your photo in Photoshop and its compression is about the same.

I'd suggest you crop even more aggressively like this.. (Also, that's just 37K.)
posted by zompist at 12:48 PM on April 3 [3 favorites]

It's a profile picture, not the graduation picture you'll be sending to grandma.
posted by tommasz at 1:45 PM on April 3 [3 favorites]

Agreed, make a feature request for the new site. I think asking for the profile picture to have a little larger dimensions and also be available in 2x resolution for devices that can display it would be a good idea.
posted by ssg at 2:04 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]

It's a profile picture, not the graduation picture you'll be sending to grandma.

Years ago when I also posted my profile picture on facebook my grandma asked me who is that man is he your boyfriend. Better resolution didn't help.
posted by phunniemee at 3:37 PM on April 3 [4 favorites]

feature request+++
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 4:15 PM on April 3

I'm thinking this.
posted by clavdivs at 10:11 PM on April 3

Disappointingly low-res is how I like to see metafilter. In fact it's ideally how I see the internet, indeed how I see life.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 10:38 PM on April 3 [8 favorites]

I dunno. Mine looks right.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:13 AM on April 4

also happy with mine
posted by HearHere at 6:33 AM on April 4

Everyone on Metafilter appears slightly like a cryptid, as intended.
posted by brook horse at 8:58 AM on April 4 [2 favorites]

Grace has been gone for years now but here I get to see her every time I click on my profile. She was the sweetest cat I have ever known. I miss her still.
posted by y2karl at 3:04 AM on April 7 [1 favorite]

If 140x140 has been the case since the beginning, it should probably be updated, especially considering that many computers/monitors are now HiDPI.

Which reminds me, kirkaracha, are you implementing any explicit HiDPI support on the new site? Not that MeFi has a lot of (raster) images, in fact the profile pictures are the only ones I can think of right now.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:24 PM on April 7