Most image problems come from the file that was uploaded, not from the website. Find your symptom below.
The image is tiny or blurry
ArtSites can only show the detail the uploaded file holds, and it never makes an image larger than the file you uploaded. A file that is small to begin with has nothing more to give a large screen or a sharp phone.
Check the file's size in pixels before you upload it. On a Mac, select the file and press Command and I. On Windows, right click the file, choose Properties, then the Details tab. The image should be at least 1800 pixels on its longest side.
After an upload, ArtSites checks for you. If the file is smaller than that, a note appears under the image on the upload page: it gives the file's size in pixels and recommends the highest resolution you have. The note is advice, not an error, and a smaller file often looks fine at your current page size. The Image Library edit page for the image shows the same note, with the line Image file and its size in pixels.
Photos from the Mac Photos app
If you drag an image out of the Photos app and it is tiny, Photos may be keeping only a low-resolution copy on your Mac. This happens when the setting Optimise Mac Storage is on (in Photos, Settings, then iCloud). To get the full-size original:
- In Photos, select the photo and choose File, then Export.
- Choose Export 1 Photo and set Size to Full Size, with Quality at the highest setting.
- Upload the exported file.
Photos downloads the original from iCloud as it exports. You can also turn on Download Originals to this Mac in the same settings, which keeps full-size copies on the Mac.
A phone photo will not upload
Photos from an iPhone are saved as HEIC files. ArtSites accepts them and turns each one into a JPEG as it uploads, so you do not need to convert them first. If a HEIC photo still fails, the upload page shows the message "Unable to convert HEIC file to JPEG". Save a JPEG copy of the photo from your photo app, then upload that file.
Some versions of Safari give an uploaded file a title like tempImageXXXXXX.heic. Change the title in the Image Library after the upload.
An image with more than 100 megapixels, such as a large artwork scanned at a very high resolution, is refused with a message that tells you to reduce its resolution and upload it again.
The image looks soft on a large screen
A large screen shows your image bigger than a laptop does, so a file at the low end of the range looks soft. Upload the largest, highest-resolution file you have, at least 1800 pixels on the longest side. What Image File Types and Resolution Should I Upload? explains the file types and why a bigger original also gives you more choices later.
If you already uploaded a small file, upload the larger one in its place. Upload One Image and Put It in Galleries shows how, and Replace an Image in a Page shows how to swap an image that is in the text of a page.
A speed test says the images are not compressed
Tools such as Google PageSpeed may warn that your images are not compressed or sized properly. ArtSites already resizes every image to the space it sits in and compresses it. The files are deliberately a little larger than the space they fill, so an image stays sharp when a visitor zooms in on a phone or uses a high-resolution screen. We recommend leaving them as they are: making them smaller would make your work look worse to the people who look closely.