I have a PDR-M1 (Toshiba). It takes great pictures when viewed on the computer, however, when they're sent over the internet to ebay, the quality is poorer. I've tried taking pictures in both 640x480 and 1280x1024 pixels. Also resizing. Still no luck. I'm relatively new at this and would like to know if there is anything I'm doing wrong. Thanks for the help! Vin

-- Vincent Granberg (vgranberg@aol.com), June 12, 1999

Answers

I noticed you have an AOL email address, if you're also using their browser program I'd suggest you try the fix detailed under the heading "AOL Alert" at the bottom of:

http://www.imaging-resource.com/INDEX.HTM

It details a fix that basically tells you how to turn off AOL's browser's image compression functions which are supposed to help images load faster, but also apparently mangle the color info or play with the compression. Give it a shot, it's certainly worth a try.

If the images look good to you, on your machine, when viewed with a program other than your browser, then some part of your Internet solution is probably at fault(the AOL browser) or perhaps EBAY is optimizing/compressing the images in an effort to get them to load faster/conserve bandwidth? Try the AOL fix and see if it helps. If not, perhaps you could check with Ebay? The other possibility that comes to mind is to download & save your image from Ebay under a slightly different name than the original and then compare the file sizes or view the downloaded image with the viewer that works well with your images to see if there really is any difference other than viewing them through your browser. Good Luck.

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@francorp.francomm.com), June 13, 1999.

The fact that you are looking at an ebay ad has no bearing on image quality. While ebay hosts the text in an auction ad, all photographs are actually just hyperlinks pointing back to your own website host. Because of this when looking at one of your own ebay ads be careful that your browser is not just showing you a copy out of your local cache.

-- Rick Griffen (rgriffen@vabch.com), June 15, 1999.