Yes, Twitter does listen to you! How, you ask? Well, it is finally changing the way how it processes uploaded photos. According to Twitter engineer Nolan O’ Brien, the platform will no longer be transcoding the images that are uploaded via Twitter on the web . Instead, the JPEG encoding will be maintained, even if you upload multiple photos. For those of you unaware, transcoding degrades the photo quality and this is pretty inconvenient for professional graphic designers and passionate photographers who like to share their work with the world via Twitter.
Although the change is commendable, there are certain restrictions that should be kept in mind. For starters, image thumbnails will still be transcoded and compressed. So, the images that you will see on your feed will still look the same. However, once you click through, you will be able to access the full image (without any tweaks), if it’s a JPEG.
Additionally, Twitter will be getting rid of EXIF data (providing various details about the image). Even though this data can help photographers in checking out the aperture, ISO setting and other technical aspects of the photos they are interested in, it also makes it easier for people with ill-intentions to retrieve location-based details. So, it’s basically a good decision on Twitter’s part.
Twitter's engineer also tweeted for app users that Twitter has "nothing to share on that yet", means mobile users will need to wait a lot.
Read next: After so many criticisms on the policies, Twitter is planning to launch an Open and Decentralized social network.
Although the change is commendable, there are certain restrictions that should be kept in mind. For starters, image thumbnails will still be transcoded and compressed. So, the images that you will see on your feed will still look the same. However, once you click through, you will be able to access the full image (without any tweaks), if it’s a JPEG.
Additionally, Twitter will be getting rid of EXIF data (providing various details about the image). Even though this data can help photographers in checking out the aperture, ISO setting and other technical aspects of the photos they are interested in, it also makes it easier for people with ill-intentions to retrieve location-based details. So, it’s basically a good decision on Twitter’s part.
"Support for 4096x4096 image uploads were added in 2018 to Twitter for Web. You can view them on Twitter for Web, Twitter for iPad and Twitter for Mac when clicking/tapping to open the image. And now the quality can be what you make it- keep your JPEGs crisp and clear!", announced Nolan O'Brien. Adding further, "Other categories of images (for example: Avatars) will be getting the same improvement coming in the new year."O’Brien also attached an example photo with his tweet that gives us a glimpse of what a JPEG image with preserved quality would look like on the platform. This change will more than likely play a big role in attracting photo enthusiasts to the social networking service.
Starting today, Twitter will preserve JPEGs as they are encoded for upload on Twitter for Web. (Caveat, cannot have EXIF orientation)— Nolan O'Brien (@NolanOBrien) December 11, 2019
For example: the attached photo is actually a guetzli encoded JPEG at 97% quality with no chroma subsampling.https://t.co/1u37vTopkY pic.twitter.com/Eyq67nfM0E
Twitter's engineer also tweeted for app users that Twitter has "nothing to share on that yet", means mobile users will need to wait a lot.
Read next: After so many criticisms on the policies, Twitter is planning to launch an Open and Decentralized social network.
