Facebook vs. Google+, A Photographer's Viewpoint

Before I even start this article, I'll freely admit that I am not a fan of Facebook. Never have been and likely never will be. Despite that, I know it has it's appeal due to the large user base that it has accumulated of the last several years. However Google+ is catching up quickly, as last estimates indicated Google+ showing a number that is roughly half the active accounts of Facebook. It has grown at a much faster pace than Facebook ever has. All of this with Google+ just having passed its 2-year anniversary and only 1.5 years of being open to the public.

But I digress...

Facebook is more suited to catching up with old friends that don't have a Google+ account, or seeing the latest drama. It gets old quick...real quick. I find that on Google+ many of my discussions are with people that have similar interests, and our discussions often center around those topics. Sure there can still be some drama, but at least the ratio of drama to actual discussion favors the actual discussion.

I also keep a set of gallery albums that are my favorite shots that relate to a certain topic. On Google+, I have these set to stay at the top using a workaround through the Picasa web interface. I have set the album date to be several years in the future which keeps these galleries up on top. With Facebook, my album order is a jumbled heap of unorganized crap. If I upload more photos to an album later, the position will change yet again. Trying to find an album when there's more than a handful of them requires a bottle of Tylenol and the wisdom of a Himalayan Sherpa.

However, the biggest factor why I think Facebook does a disservice to anyone seriously interested in photography is the compression algorithms that Facebook uses to absolutely mutilate many of the images you want to showcase. It doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen, and when it does happen it's very ugly. Usually it is images with a smooth gradient in them, such as an image I posted for Independence Day. Notice the prominent bands of color in the blue sky, about a third of the way down, in the comparison below (click the image to enlarge). Facebook is on the left, Google+ is on the right:

If you want to examine the actual images, as doing so will really show you the differences, links to both are below. Due tot he small image size I use in this blog, the compression is much more subdued that it actually is.

Facebook  http://goo.gl/9UQCr
Google+  http://goo.gl/ZX2HC

With that being said, coming from an IT background, I completely understand the need for image compression. However, Facebook takes it to the extreme. The purpose in compression is to make the file size smaller, and adversely affect the image as little as possible. You want a small size with the viewer never really noticing the image was compressed. Facebook doesn't even attempt to accomplish that at times.

As a photographer wanting to showcase some images, overkill with image compression doesn't help show off your best work at all. While I still throw some of my images on Facebook, I find the bulk of my photography ends up on Google+ first because of this.

The Facebook approach of heavy compression may work well for phone camera snapshots, but as someone who takes photography a little more serious than the average camera phone addict, I find that I'm caring less and less about posting some of my images on Facebook.