Nolan O'Brien

So, how does an artist upload artwork to twitter without giving it detrimental compression artifacts (as is the case if you do not use the 'transparent pixel trick' currently)?

The most common way to improve quality is to upload at a higher resolution. Twitter supports up to 2048x2048 image uploads. It might seem counterintuitive, but with our multi-variant support there is no impact to viewing users with the full size image being large.

Is there a file size limit before high res images are converted to jpeg? For instance, I reduced a typical artwork of mine to 2048 PNG and the file size came out to be 6,77 MB. Last I've heard any numbers on this, the limit was 5 MB if I recall.

Secondly, some artists are (rightly) hesitant to upload high resolution art publicly in fear of theft (illegitimate prints etc). What is the alternative for such artists who still want to be able to not suffer the detrimental effect of the Twitter compression?

All good points. The current limit is 5MBs. A very large PNG will often exceed that which means converting it to JPEG at upload time. PNG8, however, ought never exceed 5MBs if that type of image were to be used. Twitter clients (web, mobile web, iOS, Android) will autoconvert

For trademark, I am not an attorney and don’t have any legitimate voice here. As someone who appreciates high quality content in my timeline, I would expect a watermark on high resolution artwork to preserve ownership. If that is insufficient can you help me understand more?

The ownership is preserved whether there is a trademark/signature/etc or not, as far as I know. However, it is unfortunately common for artists to find their art being sold without permission on sites that does not screen their sellers.

That is unfortunate. Do watermarks help? Most all professional prints I’ve purchased had convinced me by using a watermarked image to see how much I like the photo/art. I’m not a connoisseur by any means so hearing from professionals here would help.

This is disheartening news since Twitter is already a relatively unfriendly platform for artists... We'll have even less control over how our art is presented here since compression usually (if not always) changes how the art looks.

What in particular is problematic that you see? Twitter supporting 2048x2048 resolution helps a great deal and having PNG8 support for lossless quality images that are 256 colors or less is another feature that can be counted on with this change.

Sharing high resolution art puts it at greater risk of being stolen. Also, at least my own art files have hundreds of thousands of colors and JPEG compression always change how they look. I guess I just want to share the best-looking work I can.

By losing control over our own art I mean how without the single pixel trick it's impossible to tell how the art will actually look before a tweet goes live. There is no preview features to tell whether a picture will be compressed or not as far as I know.

I apologize if I came off as aggressive, I'm just worried about these changes as a professional artist.

Your Tweets show you care, and that's what matters. I take nothing personally. I appreciate you stepping in to share your concerns, thank you.

Your use case of a need for high quality but low resolution images is a new one for us. I have heard this from a few others as well, and we are looking at it as a use case.

Artists use PNG images with transparency so twitter doesnt compress their art into garbage quality... Are you TRYING to make this site unusable for artists? Like, with this and taking away "like"s, is getting rid of artists literally your goal? Honest question.

I think our 2048x2048 support can alleviate that a great deal. Do you have any examples you can share? The most common issue is images (usually 1080 or lower rez) get uploaded and show JPEG artifacts much easier than higher rez images.

One problem with uploading high res art is it makes it much easier for malicious parties to steal their artwork for profit via reprints on merch etc. Much easier to remove watermarks too. That's why most artists refrain from it.