Image compression - what's happening with my pictures?

[frimerke]

Hello,

I am updating my portfolio one or two times a year. Today I wanted to upload some new galleries on the website but something unacceptable is happening during pictures upload. It's the first time, I have no idea what's happening. Each picture is 60-70% compressed what makes image quality very poor. Some examples below.

Photography uploaded one year ago:

same photography uploaded today:

Another expample, uploaded one year ago:

uploaded today:

Picture uploaded one year ago has 319 KB, uploaded today 108 KB. Weebly is clearly compresing the photos what is something new for me.

Could you please help me and advise how to get back to the original settings?

[useyourbrain]

You can't once Weebly applies compression there is no undo button. No different than uploading to Flickr or most any other photo hosting site. Un-optimized photos and javascript can bring a site down to its knees so Weebly takes the liberty of optimizing uploaded photos for display on the web. The gallery where your photos are on Weebly are uploaded and compressed and there is no way to change that. If you want uncompressed cloud storage for your photos check out Phanfare or speak to me.  I hope you have backups?

[frimerke]

I am aware it's not possible to uncommpressed already uploaded picture. Is there any way to turn off compression during upload? A few day ago I purchased a two-year subscription and spent a few nice USD...

It is inexcusable that Weebly changed settings so much. If I can not turn it off I demanded the withdrawal of my subscription...

[bobafett]

I actually don't see much difference, but I guess it is personal perception.

I guess weebly is experimenting with image compression algorithm.  With millions of free sites and millions of users with un-optimized images their server time+storage needed major capital improvement.  May be they are toying with the idea of somehow extracting some money out of up selling service with less compression.

[NJRFTF]

Just throwing this out there - if you host pictures on MS Onedrive you can embed pictures directly using the Embed Code element which seems to bypass the Weebly image Editor....

From Microsoft.....

If you have a website or blog, it’s quick and easy to embed photos, Office documents, and other files from OneDrive. You can even customize how embedded Excel workbooks appear to other people.

1. Go to the OneDrive website. You might need to sign in with your Microsoft account.

2. Pick the file you want to embed by selecting the check box in the upper-right corner of the file.

3. Tap or click Embed on the top of the page, and then choose Generate.

4. Copy and paste the code into the code of your website or blog.

[bobafett]

@NJRFTF:  That will kill the drag and drop feature and will make the image heavy pages too fat.  Also, do you think majority of 'WEEBLY' users would fork out extra to store images? I believe weebly uses 75 to 80% compression - that actually is not bad.

I guess that may be the reason image serious artists use behance or other services to showcase their work.

[Brodie]

frimerke, Weebly does optimize the photos for web. If this is enough of an issue for you to end your service, and you're

still in your 30 day refund window, contact us via our Phone, Chat, or Email support channels to assist: 

https://hc.weebly.com/hc/en-us/articles/204197083

Hopefully, the ease of use of the editor and the other features available for your hosting make it worth it, especially considering

as others hinted at, the user experience on your site isn't suffering for having those optimized photos.

Also, you can request features like you're referring to (image hosting without optimization) here:
https://community.weebly.com/t5/Vote-on-Features/idb-p/IdeaExchange

[frimerke]

Unfortunately, I had to cancel my subscription. Brodie, thank you for your help. I am waiting for 4277099 request to be resolved soon.

[adilr]

I have the same problem. After 3 years with weebly, why now? 

[Adam7]

We upgraded our image editor from a Flash-based editor to a non-Flash Based editor, and I'm sure it's usually a totally different software library to compress images. With most browsers no longer supporting Adobe Flash out-of-the-box, it was important to switch to a solution that didn't rely on it to function.

[adilr]

Adam, thanks for clarifying the facts.

However, as a customer, I want to know if there is an alternative to fix this?

[Adam7]

Some people have uploaded the image elsewhere, then used the "Image URL" option to use the image with the image element. After dragging an image element to the page and clicking on it, choose the Image URL option to the right of the popup and enter the URL of your image.

[bobafett]

@Adam: That is cool.  I didn't know of its existance.

Any way hope you had great X-mas and best wishes for the new year.

[Adam7]

I don't believe it was part of the old image editor. Pretty handy, though!

Happy Holidays to you, too, @bobafett!

[adilr]

Thanks. That works, not an ideal solution but at least it works.

Happy Holidays!

[nando1]

There's countless people on the web having issues with this on weebly. I really shouldn't be spending hours researching how to get around this (such as hosting on other websites).

It's a disgrace that people (including myself) are paying for Weebly for hosting, and we can't load original images without this compression screwing the images up. 

[mnscot]

I understand that some people may have an issue with this.  If you're previewing artwork, for instance.  However, speaking as a general user with multiple other people editing our website, I'm very happy to hear that weebly handles the image compression for me.  It makes the user experience, especially on mobile, very good.  I suggest loading the image and gaining the advantage of compression and then linking that photo to another file sharing site if someone wants to see a high resolution image.  They will understand that it will take a while longer to load.  Best of both worlds IMHO.