🌟 imgur PSA 🌟

[seliph]

thought this would be worth mentioning - as of recently, imgur significantly lowers the quality of larger images. this means uploading to imgur will affect digital entries for celeste's observatory. depending on your entry, it may also affect entries for magazine mash-up, tbt's crazy dream sequence and cosmic cosmetics.

to show you what i mean here's a close-up. imgur is on the left, original on the right

this may be an insignificant change to some but if you're like me it's pretty devastating.

anyway, in light of this here's a handful of alternatives, note the methods below are for desktop users:

1. discord

1. have either a private server for yourself (click the + button on the left sidebar to create a new server) or be in a server where you're comfortable posting your entry.
2. click your uploaded image, you'll see a button that says "open original". click it and it will open the image in your browser.
   
   
3. copy the link at the top OR right click and hit "copy image address", surround that URL with image tags like you would an imgur photo.

2. imgbb

1. click "start uploading" and select your image. you can then select if you want your image to be auto-deleted after a period of time or not.
2. hit "upload".
3. do not use the bbcode provided. it shrinks down large images.
4. click the thumbnail of your image, the next screen should be your file with a "load full resolution" button. click it.
   
   
5. right click, hit "open image in new tab", and copy the link at the top OR right click and hit "copy image address", surround that URL with image tags like you would an imgur photo.

3. tumblr

1. click the camera/"photo" button in the top bar.
2. upload your image. give it a minute to fully upload, the "post" button will be greyed out and unclickable until it's ready.
3. while you're waiting, you have the option to make your post private by clicking the down arrow next to the post button and selecting either "save as draft" or "post privately". i personally prefer drafts because they're easier to find again.
   
   
4. left click your image then right click, hit "open image in new tab", and copy the link at the top OR right click and hit "copy image address", surround that URL with image tags like you would an imgur photo.

note - i have tested out twitter and while not as bad as imgur, it does reduce quality for larger images like celeste's observatory. tbt's own uploader also cannot upload large images.

anyway that's all the alternatives i know of and have tried, feel free to post more if you know any!

update: for those of you with super huge image files, sta.sh has a larger file size limit than discord and tumblr:

Tysm! I personally used sta.sh (from deviantart) for my Celeste entry since it was too big for Discord, but it's super nice of you to explain the alternatives!!

 

[Lavamaize]

Thanks for the heads up and the instructions on how to use other sites to upload images!

 

[*The Oakboro Mayor*]

This is incredibly helpful (and a game-changer), thank you seliph!

 

[samsquared]

Thank you for providing alternatives- I was wondering why my image lost SO much color information/alpha despite me not compressing anything

 

[Miss Misty]

Thanks for the heads up! Imgur's been slowly circling the drain for a while so I'm not surprised they started compressing images as well.

 

[Rubombee]

Tysm! I personally used sta.sh (from deviantart) for my Celeste entry since it was too big for Discord, but it's super nice of you to explain the alternatives!!

 

[Hypno KK]

Thanks for the heads up! I'll have to change hosts too.

 

[Piggleton]

Oh omg! Thank you for sharing. I was wondering why my art looked worse for some reason after uploading

 

[Snowifer]

Well, it looks like I'm moving where I'm storing my images again.
Thanks for the info!

 

[lana.]

thank you seliph, this is super helpful!!

 

[amemome]

Thank you for the heads up! I didn't realize imgur was starting to compress!

 

[Mick]

Ah really? I remember back in the day I started using imgur specifically because they did not compress the images I uploaded. Guess that stopped, then. And something else that is stopping is me using their upload service. :')

 

[Chere.]

Whoa I did not realize this was happening, thank you so much for the heads up! This is super unfortunate since I've relied on imgur for 5 years, so I'm glad I found this out sooner rather than later. I'll still use it for most things, but for bigger art files I'll definitely be using other ways to post them.

 

[LambdaDelta]

I seem to be safe so far, even comparing side by side

 

[Larsi]

Strange... when I upload my large Celeste drawing file at imgur I don't get any compression

 

[xSuperMario64x]

I personally use ImgBB for all my picture uploading and it works very well.