Short Answer – What’s the Maximum Image Size on Facebook in 2012?

The short answer is 960 pixels. This is measured on the long edge. For example, the image in the screenshot above is at a standard 3:2 aspect ratio, so the longer edge (the horizontal width) is resized to 960 pixels and the shorter edge (vertical height) is resized to 640 pixels to maintain that aspect ratio. When you upload an image, Facebook will automatically resize it for you.

Long Answer – It Depends On Your Browser Window

While Facebook will resize the image that it stores on its server, the actual image people see will typically be smaller than that. The lightbox image viewer that Facebook uses automatically resizes along with your browser window. It tries to maintain at least about a 40 pixel margin on the left and right and about a 20 pixel margin on the top and bottom. If the full size image would push the borders of the image viewing box into these margins, then the image will be immediately resized.

For example, my screen resolution is set at 1280 x 800 pixels on my laptop. With the scrollbar on the side of the browser window and the margins, Facebook ends up displaying that 960 x 640 photo at 838 x 559 pixels. This resizing is done client-side through CSS styling attached to the image, where as the earlier resizing done during the upload process is performed by a server side script that changes the actual image file.

The only time that I am able to see the image at it’s full size is if I enter full screen mode. Then, the photo is displayed at the true max size of 960 x 640 pixels.

What About High Resolution Images?

Facebook has also added a feature to store high resolution images on its server. I haven’t really played around with it much. But, as I understand it, this will save two copies of the image on Facebook’s server. One is a resized copy (960 pixels on the long side) to fit the maximum size for image viewing on the website. The other is saved at up to 2,048 pixels on the long edge, and users can download that image and use it as they see fit.

For viewing images, this is pointless, as it doesn’t effect the maximum viewable size. However, it is useful if you want to share pictures with friends and allow them to download and print them. A 960 x 640 image would create a slightly grainy and low resolution image when printed (~160 ppi). A higher resolution, 2,048 x 1,365 pixel image would allow you to print out the picture at a full 300 ppi.

I’ve been meaning to do some housekeeping around here for a while now, and now that I’ve gotten around to starting I realize it was long overdue. I redesigned the theme, adjusted the ads, and fixed a few things earlier this year, but I’ve come to realize that I wrote a lot, and it’s kind of disorganized.

In particular, the category structure of this blog has grown increasingly unwieldy over the past year and a half. I started this blog in the summer of 2010 with a few categories in mind, and I think it had recently grown to as many as two dozen categories. Yikes!

Pruned Category Structure

I went through today and pruned most of the excess categories, moving posts into a more appropriate large category. I’m not entirely done, but I will be soon. The goal is to have ten categories. Most of these have been renamed, in keeping with the site’s theme, as some kind of “How To.”

Eight “How To” Categories:

• How to Choose a Good Camera. Advice on buying digital cameras and equipment, as well as straight up gear reviews.
• How to Learn About Your Camera. Other resources for learning about photography and related subjects.
• How to Light Your Photos. Guides to lighting photos, examples of lighting in photos, and general thoughts on lighting.
• How to Make an Awesome Yearbook. All things related to yearbook publishing.
• How to Process Your Images. Post processing tutorials, examples, and tips.
• How to Run a Photography Business. Thoughts on transitioning from photography-as-hobby to photography-as-business.
• How to Use Your Camera. Tips and tricks for how to use your camera, along with definitions of photography terms and explanations of key ideas.
• How to Use Your Photos. Suggestions for utilizing and sharing your photos, including examples of print products and designs.

Some of these categories are fairly well saturated, and may not see a whole lot of new additions. I’d expect the most growth in the next six months to be in “How to Make an Awesome Yearbook,” “How to Choose a Good Camera,” and “How to Use Your Photos.” I also wanted to add some content the “How to Learn About Your Camera,” including some write-ups on photography schools. But I’m not sure how likely that is.

In addition, there are two other categories that will remain: Examples of Photography and Random Thoughts. Examples of Photography is just what it sounds like – pictures from Flickr, gigs from my photography studio, or other pictures that I like and want to share. Random Thoughts is simply a catch-all category for anything else…

To Do List

For the rest of the week, I have a few goals that I’d like to pursue.

Make a few guest posts. I’ve always thought about doing this, but never got around to it. I think it’ll help balance out the site’s link profile for SEO purposes and bring in some new visitors.

Start an email list. RSS subscriptions are nice, but I’ve always intended to gather e-mails for a newsletter. I want to put that in place while I have time to work on the design of the lead generating form.

Revamp the “About” and “Contact.” I want to create some social properties (Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus) to connect to the site, add some more detailed information about me on the site, and fix up the contact section.

Offer guest post opportunities. Not only do I want to make a few guest posts, but I plan on writing up a page requesting guest posts. I’d be interested in getting a few extra posts per month from other authors, and I’d be more than happy to trade a few links for the privilege.

Get a head start writing. I want to add a lot of content to the Yearbook section, and I have a few posts in mind for the Choosing a Camera section. I want to get ahead start this week and write up a bunch of posts, so that the rest of April can be published kind of on autopilot. I’m about to get real busy at work making my own yearbook, so I won’t have a lot of free time until mid-May.

CommentLuv? Not really a to-do, but a decision to make. I’ve been reading about and commenting on CommentLuv enabled blogs this weekend, and I’m considering adding it to this blog. I’m not sure if I want the headache of moderating the extra comment volume, though. I might try it out for a week and see how it goes.

One thing that still confuses the hell out of me, though, is sales tax.

Note: I am not an attorney, an accountant, or in any way your official legal tax advice. I write this in the spirit of sharing and helping those who are also researching the same questions. Your mileage may vary, and when in doubt contact the tax authorities (like I have, and from whom I’m awaiting some clarification).

Photographic Services Are Taxable. Simple, Right?

My initial thoughts on the topic were that photographic services were taxable. A long time ago, I had stumbled on some state document that suggested that. While doing some more research, I found that document again: NJ S&U-4.

This document, an official (if sometimes unhelpful) guide to New Jersey’s Sales & Use Tax lists many types of services and declares whether they are taxable or not. Web Site Design and Interior Design, for example, are exempt from sales and use tax. Printing services, on the other hand, are not. Interestingly, neither “Design” nor “Graphic Design” made the list, but anyway…

On the topic of photographers, it offers the eminently helpful statement:

Photographer’s Services … T

Umm, yeah, that’s about it. That says that photographer’s services are taxable, but there’s no further discussion of what exactly is a photographer’s service and what is not.

But Digital Photographs Are Not Taxable. Hmm…

To make things somewhat more confusing, however, there is one other mention of the word “photograph” in the document. Under the section on “Digital Property.” While things like digital music are explicitly taxed, this tax is…

not imposed on other types of digital property that are delivered electronically, such as digital photographs, digital magazines, etc.

So… how are a photographer’s services taxable, while the photographs themselves are not? Seeing as this statement appears in another section (that on digital property), it could be that it is taken somewhat out of context. Perhaps it doesn’t apply to professional photographers, but to other people (stock photography websites?) that specialize in selling photographs without producing them.

Professional Photographers & New Jersey Sales Tax

To make matters even more confusing (and seemingly contradictory), New Jersey has also published a “helpful” summary of tax rules relating to photographers – ANJ-2. If you search for this, note that there is a new revision issued in 2009 (the one I linked to), but an older revision (from 2000) is still floating around the Internet. They are slightly different.

Here, there is a section titled, “Electronic Transmission.” It reads:

If a photograph is either scanned, taken with a digital camera, or computer-generated and then transmitted solely by e-mail or other form of electronic transmission, the transaction is treated as the sale of intangible property, which is not subject to tax.

This would seem to suggest that, unless tangible property exchanges hands (a DVD of images, a physical proof, a photo book, etc), the images themselves are not taxable. That then begs the question: are the “photographic services” taxable? If someone hires me to shoot a portrait session and I deliver their proofs electronically, I have not sold them any tangible property and this seems to present a conundrum. The initial document states that services are taxable, while the new document states that the digital images are not.

Oi.

Contact the NJ Division of Taxation

I hate bugging people to answer questions that have answers. I am more than willing to put in the time to research an issue, read all of the relevant material, and come to my own decision. But in this case… I haven’t got a clue what’s right, and what’s not.

And at the end of the day, I don’t want to be in an argument with a tax auditor and find out that he doesn’t agree with my interpretation of the New Jersey Sales and Use Tax. [Which, for the record, seems clear enough to me that if I bill someone for a portrait session / event and deliver nothing but an online gallery, the session/event itself should not be taxable. But, I can easily see how this would be unclear to someone in charge of generating as much revenue as possible for the state.]

So, I fired off an e-mail to the NJ Division of Taxation. I cited the relevant documents (as I did above), and I provided a few, clearly detailed scenarios. Hopefully, I can get an answer (in writing) that clarifies when I should and should not be collecting sales tax. If I receive a useful response, I’ll be sure to share it here… but again, do your own due diligence. I am not your attorney nor am I your accountant.

So what are you options…? Here are a couple places to consider.

UPrinting.

I was searching for a digital printer over the summer to print comp cards for my photography studio. I considered a bunch of different options, and I went with UPrinting.

Why? For starters, I could order a free sample kit. This arrived in a few days, and it made it clear that the print quality and paper quality were both high. Oh, and the best part? Free really meant free. This wasn’t like Vista Print “free,” where “free” means set up fees, shipping, etc. I filled out a form, and by the next week I had a sample kit in my hands.

I’ll be writing up a review of UPrinting in a separate post, but here’s the general idea. They offer high quality, cheap printing. Their minimum orders are pretty low on most products, although you will sometimes find that it pays to order more. For example, if you’re looking for business cards, there’s almost no difference in price between 250, 500, and 1,000 cards. One of the only products where their minimum order was prohibitively large was calendars. I love the prices, and I’d love to order calendars from them, but I can’t justify that kind of order size.

You get a digital proof to review within 48 hours. You can drop ship items to clients (perfect for graphic designers searching for a business partner). Perhaps the only “downside” is that they focus on people who can and do design their own print products. If that’s you – if you design your own business cards, post cards, etc – and you’re just looking for a printer… try UPrinting. You won’t be disappointed.

BudgetPrints.

Recently, I came across another online digital printer – Budget Prints. I haven’t ordered anything from them yet, but I plan on placing an order in the next few weeks to test out their services.

Why? Their prices look amazing. Their price for 1,000 business cards, for example, beats UPrinting. But, more importantly, you can by much smaller orders for cheap prices (i.e. 50 business cards for $2.59). I’d be very interested in seeing their color reproduction quality, as well as the paper quality (they offer 93lb. card stock and 111lb. cover stock).

But, that’ll have to wait a few weeks until I put together an order that I want to get printed as a sample. In the meantime, if you’re curious… you may want to try them out. As an added bonus, they have free shipping on medium sized orders ($30 or more), which is quite a cost savings over UPrinting (~$10 shipping per order, FedEx).

If anyone has placed an orer with Budget Prints, I would be very interested in hearing about your experience. Drop a line in the comments below.

Vista Print.

Eugh. I’ve written about them before, and you may know my opinion of them. I’ll be honest, I’ve never ordered anything from Vista Print. I know friends that have, and they’ve loved it.

The good? They offer lots of templates for you to work with, which is great if you aren’t a graphic designer yourself.

The bad? They advertise tons of “free” products that are anything but. You need to pay set up fees, shipping, etc. At the end of the day, you end up paying as much or more as competitors, like UPrinting or Budget Prints.

That’s not necessarily horrible, but it strikes me as slightly dishonest to build a whole brand around free stuff, and then not offer free stuff. They strike me as dishonest and ungenuine… someday, I may order something from Vista Prints to actually test their quality, but in the meantime I’m not too thrilled about them.

Bottom Line?

Based on personal experience, go with UPrinting. I love them, and I’ve used them before. If you’re adventurous, try Budget Prints. I haven’t tried them, but they look like they have potential. In my mind, Vista Print is a last resort, although it is one of the biggest names in digital printing.

If you’ve read even a little bit of this blog, you should know I’m a Canon person. I picked them, somewhat randomly, and never really thought about Nikon. Now that I’m invested in Canon, I’m pretty much stuck. Unless I plan on selling everything and buying a whole kit of Nikon gear, there’s not much point in me shopping around.

But that’s the key point – the initial choice can effect you for years to come. So, if you haven’t gone down either the Nikon or Canon road yet, you may want to consider your options. The Nikon D3100 and Canon t2i EOS Rebel 550D were both released in 2010 and are both still great entry level cameras. But, if you have to make a choice, how do they compare against each other?

Without getting into a huge Nikon vs. Canon argument, let’s just look at the direct comparison between these two cameras.

Price Point

The first thing we should address is the price difference. This will help you decide if the differences between the cameras actually merit investing in the more expensive camera. If not? Go with the cheaper one.

The Canon t2i costs $649.99 with a kit lens from Amazon, and $499.99 for the body alone. The Nikon D3100, on the other hand, is $549.99 with a kit lens, and about $425 for the body. Depending on how you purchase it, you’ll save up to $100 by going with the Nikon D3100 instead of the Canon EOS t2i 550D.

Resolution and Image Sensor

Good, hard numbers are always a good place to compare. Here, the Canon t2i has a clear advantage. It’s an upgrade over the older Canon t1i, and the image sensor sports about 18 megapixels. The Nikon D3100, on the other hand, “only” has 14.2 megapixels. Yes, on paper, this clearly makes the Canon t2i “better.” However, if you’ve read my rant on how many megapixels you really need, you know this doesn’t matter a whole lot. 14.2 megapixels is probably more than enough for whatever you’re doing.

The ISO rating of the sensor, on the other hand, is potentially a huge difference. The Canon t2i offers standard ISO of up to 6400, whereas the Nikon D3100 only goes up to ISO 3,200 by default. On paper, this would seem to be a huge difference between the two cameras, as having a whole extra stop of light intensity is crucial if you’re going to be taking any pictures at indoor sporting events. But, both cameras have an option to expand their ISOs up to 12,800.

I’d like to see a side by side comparison of image quality of the two, but here’s an example of what the ISO 6,400 expansion looks like on an old Canon t1i. This is after some noise reduction in Lightroom. It is fairly grainy at 1:1, but once you noise reduce and shrink it, it’s a perfectly use-able photo.

Random Tidbits

Let’s wrap up with a few random tidbits. The Canon t2i has a much higher resolution LCD screen, making images and videos look much better when you preview them on camera. This doesn’t necessarily impact your photos, but it does impact the user experience. You get a much better idea of how sharp and nice the image is when you can see it in a higher resolution. Points for the Canon t2i on this one.

The Canon t2i offers an external microphone jack for those video people out there, while the Nikon D3100 has no external microphone. Useless for me, as I almost exclusively do still photography, but I’m sure that matters to some people. While we’re on the topic of video, the Canon t2i also offers a hi-def, 1080P video mode at 30 frames per second. The Nikon D3100, on the other hand, only films at 24 frames per second, and the Nikon D3100 doesn’t have the option to take 60 fps video like the Canon t2i does. To add insult to injury, the Canon t2i offers (mostly) manual video controls, while the Nikon D3100 is strictly auto.

Bottom Line – Which Is Right For You?

Now that we’ve established there is a price difference of about $100, are the differences in the camera enough to make you choose the Canon t2i over the Nikon D3100? On paper, it is clearly a “better” camera (unless you have a natural hatred of all things Canon), but that doesn’t mean it’s best for everyone.

If you’re going to be shooting video, I’d say definitely get the Canon t2i (or, read this comparison of the Canon t2i vs t3i and think about getting the newer Canon). Despite being released six months later than the Canon t2i, the Nikon D3100 has all of the video limitations of the earlier Canon EOS Rebel t1i. It doesn’t seem like they cared much about video when they put this one out.

If you’re not worried about that, and you’re just looking for a first digital SLR camera to play around with? The Nikon D3100 is a great camera, and it’s cheaper. $100 is a cost savings of about 15 to 20% at this low price point – not shabby. You still have a high resolution dSLR camera with full manual controls and similar low light capabilities. I wouldn’t pay $100 to go from 14 megapixels to 18.

Now, the other thing you may want to think about is … do you want to invest in Nikon or Canon? The body of lenses and speedlites available may alter your decision. That, however, is a much tougher nut to crack, and it’s a topic to cover a different day. Click on the links below to see the cameras on Amazon, and decide which one is best for you.

Well, for starters, you are probably using your pop-up flash. This works ok if it’s just filling in a bit of light, but when it becomes the main light, you’re in for trouble. There are two reasons for this: hard light and the inverse square law. Hard light vs. soft light is a discussion for another day, but for now let’s focus on the inverse square law.

What Is the Inverse Square Law?

At its core, the inverse square law is a fancy piece of physics and calculus. We don’t need to get into the nitty gritty details, but for us it means: the farther something is from the source of light, the less well it is lit. Let’s say you have a single lightsource in a room – a lamp. The closer something is to the lamp, the brighter it will appear. As it moves away from the lamp, the light intensity falls off, and the object appears darker.

If you want to get technical and specific about it, every time you double the distance, your quarter the light intensity. If a spotlight is 5 feet from a model and you pull it back five feet (double the distance), you’ve effectively quartered its light intensity and brought the exposure down two stops.

What Does This Have to Do With On Camera Flashes?

That’s all well and good for working in a studio where you routinely move lights closer to and farther from a model, but what does this have to do with a flash on a camera? Observe the picture to the left.

This was a quick snapshot I took in a dim auditorium during the intermission of a show. I was zoomed out to 24mm, so I was probably no more than three maybe four feet from Danielle, the girl closest to the camera. Let’s call it four feet for sake of argument. The other girl is another two feet behind her.

What’s going on here? I have the flash pointed straight at them. The camera meters for the girl that is closest to me, and it exposes her pretty well. The light is a bit harsh and her cheeks have some blown out highlights, but she’s alright. The girl behind her? She’s under-exposed. The people a few feet behind her? Almost black.

The camera metered the situation, chose a power level for the flash that would expose the closest subject, and stopped. Now, as the distance between the flash and the rest of the image increases, that light intensity falls off. The woman directly behind Danielle is probably another four feet back – double the distance from the flash – and she is pretty drastically underexposed.

This is why when you take a picture in a dark room and use a dead-on flash, you typically end up with a few overexposed people, some underexposed people, and a very dark background.

So How Does Bouncing the Flash Help?

Back to our original photo, you should notice a huge difference.

The girl in the front, Olga, is exposded nicely. The girl behidn is is still exposed pretty well. The wall in the background is slightly under-exposed, maybe a stop or so, but nothing too drastic.

So how is this different from the photo above? The subject (Olga) is well-exposed, and there is a gradual drop off of light intensity as you move away from the camera. This creates a little contrast between her and the background, but it doesn’t leave the rest of the image lost in blackness.

This is achieved by bouncing the flash off the ceiling. Now, the light is traveling much farther before it hits the subject. It goes up, hits the ceiling, and then radiates out into the room. The effective distance between my light source (the flash) and the subjects (the three people) now varies fairly little. If it’s thirty feet up to the ceiling, and the other girl is fifteen feet back, she still isn’t much farther away in relative terms.

In the end, this achieves my desired goal – create a gradual gradation of light from perfect exposure to slight under-exposure. It also creates a much larger and softer light source, but again that’s a topic for another day. The key idea is to bounce your flash – either off the ceiling or off of a wall behind you – to reduce the differences in distance between the flash and your subjects.

Throughout the week, I plan on posting a few more tip for shooting indoors using a flash. Subscribe to the RSS feed, or check back in a few days to follow along.

This particular page is “Celebrity Day,” from our 2010 yearbook. It was one of the themed days from Senior Week, alongside Wacky Wednesday, 80′s Day, and Twin Day. The students dressed up like some of their favorite celebrities, and we snapped off some portraits in the amphitheater.

It was a win-win situation. We got material to use for the yearbook, and we got to sell some pictures to the students as a fundraiser.

I definitely didn’t get all of the costumes, but the kids had a great time with it. They were also much better at guessing who people were supposed to be. My favorite is in the bottom row, second from the left. He did a good job with Jay-Z.

So if you’re looking for some new yearbook page ideas that’ll get more kids into your yearbook, host a senior week. Get with the senior advisor, come up with a list of themed days, like Celebrity Day, and photograph all the kids that come to school dressed up. You’ll have more than enough material to use for your layout.

This particular page is “Wacky Wednesday,” from our 2010 yearbook. The idea was kind of open, and the students were told to be creative. Wear something crazy, wacky, and weird. People went for mis-matching outfits. One kid wore his clothes backwards. Everybody looked a little… crazy. But it was fun! And the pictures were awesome.

So if you’re hard up for ideas for pages to include in your yearbook, start with senior week. Organize one with the senior advisor, and have a wacky wednesday. Assuming your kids are creative, you’ll have plenty of material to fill your layout, and you’ll have a brand new, creative, yearbook page.

One of my favorite pages was “80′s Day.” This comes from our 2010 yearbook. The students dressed up in what they felt was 1980′s style clothing. We set up a studio in the amphitheater, took some pictures, and we had more than enough to make a great page. We were also able to sell some of the prints for a fundraiser.

The part I loved about this page idea was how the students interpreted “80′s Day.” One kid went for a Fresh Prince type of look, while another group tried to channel Run DMC. Some of the girls went with big hair, and bright colors were everywhere. It may not have looked exactly like the eighties… but the pictures are fun nonetheless.

So if you’re in search of new and different yearbook page ideas, get with your senior advisor and put together a spirit week for your senior class. Every day is potentially another page or another spread that you can have in your yearbook.

How Does a Dye Sub Printer Create a Final Image?

Here’s the basic idea. The paper passes through the printer and it passes over a colored ribbon, for example magenta. As the paper passes through, the ribbon is exposed to heat, which transfers a certain amount of the magenta pigment onto the paper.

The paper passes through the printer several times, and the printer applies all of the colors in succession. It’s pretty cool to watch, as the image takes on more color with each pass. Together, these colors combine to form the final colors in the photo. This is a typical color process for printing technology, which is different from the RGB color combinations created for on-screen graphics.

How Are Dye Sub Printers Different From Inkjet Printers?

In an inkjet printer, a print nozzle moves over the paper and drops colored liquid ink onto the paper. The different colors vary depending on the printer, and some inkjet printers can have six or seven different pigments. But in the end, these pigments are arranged in a tight pattern of individual points, like pixels on a screen.

This is both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, it can create a sharper image, with clearer definition between colors. On the other, the individual droplets formed by the print nozzle can cause the image to appear pixelated and you might see dots. This is, however, less of an issue with a high quality inkjet printer and quality paper.

What Kind of Supplies Do I Need for a Dye-Sub Printer?

This is the weird part about dye-sub printers. Rather than using an ink cartridge that is used up at varying speeds, dye sublimation printers use a very specific and very predictable set of supplies. Each piece of ribbon can be used only once, because the heating process physically removes the pigment from the film. So if a ribbon contains enough film for eighteen photos, then it will print 18 photos… no more, no less.

This allows you to very easily predict how much prints will cost. For a Canon SELPHY CP800, a set of supplies for 108 photos costs about $30.00. That means that you’re paying about $0.30 per print. A larger, professional grade dye sub printer like a HiTi P510S uses cheaper supplies. The ink and paper for 660 photos costs $116, or $0.17 to $0.18 per print.

Some people complain that dye-sub printers are more expensive than inkjet printers. I’m not so sure. I think these people tend to over-estimate how long their color print cartridges will last, and underestimate the combined cost of both paper and ink.

Shopping For a Dye Sublimation Printer

There are a few basic questions you should ask yourself when shopping for a dye-sub printer. How is the print quality? How much are supplies? How long does it take to make a photo?

I wrote a review of a Canon Selphy CP800 last fall. I loved it, and for the cost ($80-90 for the unit, and $0.30 per print), it created great quality photos. One detractor is that it takes 30 to 45 seconds to print an image.

If you’re looking for something that works quicker and cheaper, you can get something like a HiTi P510s. It’s a much larger investment up front (~$900), but the print cost is much lower (~$0.17) and it only takes 10 to 15 seconds to print a photo. For heavy use and/or professional use, this is a much smarter investment in the long run. I wrote up an article comparing the print cost of the Canon Selphy CP800 and the Hiti P510s.

Although I’m happy with my Selphy for the moment, I’ll be doing some more research about other dye-sub printers over the next few weeks. If you’re in the market for a dye sub, check the Dye Sub Printers tag on this website to keep up to date.

If you own a dye-sub printer, I’d be interested to hear about your experience in the comment section below!