What causes this?

This is a serious question, not an attempt to get you to buy my stuff.
I'm puzzled why my eBay photos taken with the same camera, the same
settings and stored as jpegs of the same size and resolution come out so
different on the site.

My first photo is beautiful, the second of the multiple items has an
ugly blur around each item. eBay doesn't know why this is so. Any
suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong would be appreciated.

See:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=130201035449

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=130201127003

laocmo wrote:
> This is a serious question, not an attempt to get you to buy my stuff.
> I'm puzzled why my eBay photos taken with the same camera, the same
> settings and stored as jpegs of the same size and resolution come out so
> different on the site.
>
> My first photo is beautiful, the second of the multiple items has an
> ugly blur around each item. eBay doesn't know why this is so. Any
> suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong would be appreciated.
>
> See:
>
> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=130201035449
>
> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=130201127003

Looks like JPEG artifacting at work - the second one is excessively
compressed. It's there a little bit on the first one, but it's not as
noticeable because of the multi-colored background. JPEG compression
really doesn't handle edges on solid colors very well.

Not a solution as such, but a good workaround would be to not use a
solid background, as you have in the second shot.

On 2008-02-27 06:47:03 -0700, laocmo <loliver2@insight.rr.com> said:

> This is a serious question, not an attempt to get you to buy my stuff.
> I'm puzzled why my eBay photos taken with the same camera, the same
> settings and stored as jpegs of the same size and resolution come out
> so different on the site.
>
> My first photo is beautiful, the second of the multiple items has an
> ugly blur around each item. eBay doesn't know why this is so. Any
> suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong would be appreciated.
>
> See:
>
> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=130201035449
>
> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=130201127003

Wrong size & resolution. Save your auction pix @ 72 pix/in in a size
around 800-1200 pixels wide. Even if you use medium jpeg quality (to
keep file size around 150k), the result will be much better than
uploading smaller dimension images @ high resolution, as you have here.
I also think the pink one has Photoshop artifacts.

Here's one of my recent auction shots:
http://web.mac.com/olddognewtrick/iW...s/conta-36.jpg
and you can see how it looks on eBay by searching for item 290209149365

--
Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be
admired: even I who write this, and you who read this.