New: embedded color profiles, sharpening, default cropping
Color profiles
Today I released a few new noteworthy additions to AstroBin. I am very excited to have finally addressed the big elephant in the room: embedded color profiles.
From now on, AstroBin will rendition the correct colors in all modern browsers when you submit an image with an embedded color profile. This is achieved by applying the color profile to thumbnails in the sRGB colorspace.
When the color profile is ignored, as it happened before on AstroBin, the image will appear paler and washed out. Please note that this issue was only present if you used to export your images with an embedded color profile.
Here's an example before & after. Obviously, the right one is correct, and it's how an image like that would appear on AstroBin.
Thumbnail sharpening
AstroBin resizes your original file to smaller sizes for consumption on the regular image page and the high resolution view. However, this leads to a slight softening and loss of sharpness that some of you have brought to my attention.
Now you have the option to apply a very light sharpening to your thumbnails.
The effect is subtle but noticeable. The setting is optional and defaults to off. You will find in the “Edit thumbnails” page.
Thumbnail cropping usability improvements
As a final note, I have applied a couple of usability improvements to the thumbnailing process.
When you get to the upload step where you select your thumbnail position, the initial settings are already set to cover as much of the image as possible.
When you upload a new revision that has the same width and height as the original, AstroBin assumes the interesting region remained the same, so it copies the thumbnail settings from the original image.
That's all for today, thanks for reading and clear skies!
Salvatore