How SmugMug displays photos:
The 9 sizes of SmugMug: |
|||
| Pixels wide | Pixels high | ||
| Small thumbnails | Up to 100 | Up to 100 | |
| Large thumbnails | Up to 150 | Up to 150 | |
| Small | Up to 400 | Up to 300 | |
| Medium | Up to 600 | Up to 450 | |
| Large | Up to 800 | Up to 600 | |
| XLarge | Up to 1024 | Up to 768 | |
| X2Large | Up to 1280 | Up to 960 | |
| X3Large | Up to 1600 | Up to 1200 | |
| Original | Huge | Huge | |
SmugMug makes up to 8 display copies from each photo you upload.
If the original photo you add to SmugMug is less than 1601x1201 pixels, but greater than 1280x960, we do not make an X3Large copy but instead use your original as X3Large.
Likewise, if your original is less than 1281x961 but greater than 1024x768, we use it for X2Large. And so on.
Custom sizes?
Got jaggies?
It's possible to wreck how your computer displays photos, with just a few clicks.
I see a color shift when I upload to SmugMug...
Smugblog to the rescue.
Some photos are color shifted on my Mac...
The downside of the Mac's factory settings.
Resizing & sharpening
SmugMug uses the Lanczos algorithm to make display copies because it preserves the most detail. It is not often seen in software like Photoshop, because it is CPU-intensive.
Any time an image is downsampled (to go from your original to SmugMug's large display size, for example), the image loses sharpness. The usual way to restore sharpness is to apply unsharp mask. A typical value, and Photoshop's default, is 50%. By default SmugMug applies only 20% (0.20) because Lanczos does not lose as much sharpness when resizing.
Our default, shown in the center photos below, is a compromise between landscape, product, and wildlife photographers who like their images sharp, and portrait photographers who prefer a softer look.
| 0.000 | 0.200 | 0.400 |
If you are a Power or Professional subscriber, you can set the amount of sharpening on any gallery in Customize Gallery. You'll find the three parameters you're probably familiar with (amount, radius and threshold) and an uncommon one, sigma.
Note 1: These settings do not alter your original. Prints are made from your original so increasing unsharp amount can mean your photos will look sharp online but soft in print.
SmugMug chose .200 for Amount because we find it usually matches the sharpness of the original, which is our goal. You can see the effects of changing Amount on the examples above.
Note 2: When you change sharpness settings, they apply to images you upload after you make the changes. They do not alter past uploads, unless you do something that will cause us to make new display copies, such as rotation photos.
Note 3: Amount is the parameter most often changed. Our default of 0.20 is equivalent to 20% in Photoshop.
Note 4: Here's more advanced info on how our parameters compare to Photoshop, and what sigma means.