See links to imgur in comments. These pics are not quality at all, especially the one. I would not have posted them like this, so why did they look clear and crisp and high res back then and now they look like crap?
In: 188
[2 photos](https://imgur.com/gallery/F9P3cWO)
10 years ago resolutions were worse, quality was worse, compression was worse….could he any of those 3 things.
The most likely cause is that Pinterest is compressing old pictures that don’t get much interaction anymore.
The only real way to confidently answer the question is to have before/ after pictures (with the before being either screenshots, or the same files on another device), and/or the image specs (formats, resolution etc.)
Having said that a few things could be happening here:
1. Pinterest could be compressing old pictures with limited interactions beyond a certain period. (Likely)
There’s enough online chatter which makes this the most likely explanation https://www.pinstagram.co/how-to-stop-pinterest-images-from-pixelating-2
2. It could be a poor sharpening/ upscaling algorithm as well. Displays 10 years ago often had significantly lower resolution, and maybe Pinterest has accepted low resolution images back then, and then tried to upscale these as required. (Unlikely)
3. You might just be misremembering (possibly a factor). I don’t think that’s the only reason here, but unless you’re looking at originals vs current images that’s probably a factor.
Edit P.S. – digital data doesn’t intrinsically “deteriorate” in a manner that results in glitches/ fading like your examples. Storage crashes happen often, but those result in just losing the images/ the files becoming unreadable. Unless you’re trying to recover data from a crashed device with some specialised programs, you won’t see in-image glitches/ artefacts (and rarely in images even then).
I just noticed this on Facebook the other day. Photos shot 10-15yrs ago on a DSLR that looked great are now barely recognizable. Facebook is absolutely downsizing and compressing them. It is kind of sad since so many people rely on these albums.
When databases migrate they use the “new” compression system thats avaliable at the time. Very old pictures got compressed over time more often, making them seemingly deterioate.
A very popular and nice example is Google with Youtube. When you upload any video to YT, Google makes their own copies in multiple seperate resolutions and qualities and removing the original. Over the years, eg when the AV1 codec came out a few years back, Google transcoded all its databases gradually to save server space.
So to see that for yourself, watch an old music video thats 12+ years old. Its almost only inelligible mush now. Thats because the original was low quality in the first place, it got recompressed over and over, and modern codecs and processes are designed for high resolution source footage like 2k and up anyway.
All photos that are saved electronically will decline, Print off on top quality paper and store above flood zones in a dark place and make sure you keep different storages of the same photos, IE on line USB stick DVD and printed to paper.
Make new copies every 2 years.
Your display is way better than the one you had a decade ago, and is likely using a much higher resolution. By blowing up the old photo to see it, you get to see all of the defects and digital artifacts
So, 10 years ago let’s say you had a phone you took these pictures on.
That phone maybe could take pictures with 400 dots in it and Pinterest only accepted an upload of a photo with 240 dots or less.
So you compress that 400 dot photo to a 240 dot jpg and upload it.
Great…
Well over the next 10 years that picture still only has 240 dots on it but your phone grew, at first to 1000, then to 2000, etc. now it’s got 100,000.00 dots on your phone and even Pinterest accepts photos of 10,000.00 dots now but that photo is still 240 dots. So when you look at it, especially when you enlarge it, it looks bad, because you’re looking at too few dots for the amount of dots on your current tech.
You probably now have a much higher resolution display while the pics were posted using a lower resolution
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