New artist! How to increase upload quality?

[isabellaromainee]

Hi!! I'm brand new to Tapas as the author of Left on Read, so I apologize if this question has been asked already, but what is everyone's process when uploading? I'm having trouble keeping the literal quality of my work intact when I upload it to Tapas. When I finish my work (usually 300 ppi, 1700 x 2400 px), I download it as a jpeg (highest quality) and then go to a online image resizer to get the pixels down to below 940. I use Krita and I'm not sure if there's a document resizing option or not. When I compare my artwork to other comic artists, I notice mine is way worse in terms of quality. Is there anyway I can fix this, or improve it? Any suggestions are appreciated, thank you for taking the time to read this!

[Kiweevil]

Have you tried exporting as a .png as opposed to .jpeg? Most digital artists I know personally work with .png files more often than not. Have you tried a different ppi yet?

Also a lot of webcomic artists set the canvas size initially to whatever you want your upload dimensions to be, but just work in a different ppi to compensate for it.

[Shanny8]

Also make sure you're working at good enough resolution as well- 300 dpi or higher; but lower than 1200 dpi(or else it takes longer to load/upload).

[Kiweevil]

As someone who works almost religiously in 1200 dpi, I agree to this wholeheartedly. It is a pain in the ass and takes forever to export, split, and upload.

[isabellaromainee]

No, I haven't exported using .png but I'll definitely try it out! Also, do you mean that a lot of webcomic artists set the canvas size to 940 px or below, and work in a higher ppi to compensate? Sorry, I can't read lmao. Thank you for responding!

[isabellaromainee]

Okay I will definitely try a higher ppi! I don't really understand how digital files work, I didn't think you could go higher than 600 if you wanted to upload to tapas for some reason lol. Thank you for your response!

[Kiweevil]

Right. Sorry I'm terrible at explaining stuff. I mean instead of resizing, a lot of artists just work on the canvas size that they're going to be posting in anyway. That way you know exactly how the pixels display and everything.

For example, this is what I'm currently working on. The canvas is only 800 pixels wide, which is the size I upload in. Also maybe don't do 1200 dpi if you're uploading long strings of images because sometimes it takes awhile for the pictures to load for some readers. But you can try higher than 300 and see how that helps.

[joannekwan]

I always work at least 300dpi on a canvas the size of standard paper (8.5 x 11 for my work, as I'm US-based) since I never know when I might want to print something, or if the client wants it printed if I'm doing a commission.

Jpeg's aren't always the best choice for web-display, you get a lot of artifacting/blurriness. And they should only be reserved for images with a lot of range like photographs. For crisp images, png is best, unless the site you're uploading to has file type restrictions.

So another thing that may be causing your loss in image quality is your second step in saving. Each time you save an image in a new program, it compresses it further, deleting digital information, thus leading to quality loss (especially if you're going jpg to jpg). It's best to downsize in the image's native program where you created it in. If you can't, for the first save, save it as a high res file type like TIFF (which is normally recognized by most programs) and then save it into a smaller file type the second time.

EDIT: another rule of thumb I go by is the images I upload to the web are reduced to 72 dpi as it deters art thieves and they still display relatively fine and are still legible.

[isabellaromainee]

Thanks for clarifying, that makes sense! Also, I love your artstyle, your shading is insane and adds so much dimension to your work!!

[isabellaromainee]

Thanks so much for the in depth explanation! I'll definitely be using .pngs for now, and ditch the second step of resizing the image.

[Kiweevil]

Thank you. I'm gonna be 100% honest here I have no clue what I'm doing. I just kinda paint a buncha blobs and then use the smudge tool until I think it looks acceptable

Anywho I didn't see a link to your comic but I think I found the right one from doing a manual search in the Tapas app. I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes next from you!

[AmandaJ-art]

My page sizing is 2480x3508 and the resolution is 300 dpi. I make them jpegs from the start. I then just use an online image convertor and change the sizing to 800x(whatever it gives me). And I make sure the image quality is better. I guess it's pretty much the same as everyone elses advice ^^'

[rajillustration]

There's no reason to go below 940--just go directly to 940 px wide. Tapas will stretch the piece to fit that 940 range. Maybe this is the problem?

[joannekwan]

No Tapas doesn't stretch images, they simply present them centered (on desktop anyway).
Here are two of my series for comparison with my bookmarks bar as a sort of measuring tape.
The first is 650px the second is 800px.

EDIT: Actually in the app, depending on the mobile device, images at a certain point are also not stretched. (shots from my iPad)

[Kiweevil]

I was gonna say, I do my images 800px wide with Line Webtoon in mind, but upload the same images to Tapas. I've never had any issues with it distorting the image.

[rajillustration]

ah I had no idea, this whole time I figured going smaller would mess it up.

[NickRowler]

What program are you using to creator your art? Photoshop has a built in option for exporting images for the web. Maybe you need to resize from your art program as oppose to a 3rd party.

[isabellaromainee]

I use Krita! Haha I just googled it and turns out Krita can resize the document in program lol. Thanks for pointing that out, I'll definitely try resizing in program to avoid losing as much quality as possible!

[Riisana]

I don't blame you for thinking that~ I've seen some people upload super small comics and they got distorted (stretched to fit a certain min-width)

[Riisana]

Waaa, glad you figured it out! I didn't see your post earlier, but I'm pretty sure it's your online image resizer that was making your quality low too (That's because I used to use one to also resize and split my images for me, and it looked really bad!)

Have fun making your stories~~