I was on the other day and noticed a sequence of images looked incomplete. I checked the source and found it was missing two images, so I grabbed them and uploaded them. I did my best to tag and following guidelines.
Surprised to find the posts deleted after getting on today, and curious I searched for the image to find it reuploaded by the user Cat-in-Flight.
I checked the reason for deletion, seeing the following: https://imgur.com/a/xukvZVy

The flag says inferior/duplicate, but the images are the same resolution from the same source, and were clearly posted first based on image number.

TheOmegaAlpha said:
I was on the other day and noticed a sequence of images looked incomplete. I checked the source and found it was missing two images, so I grabbed them and uploaded them. I did my best to tag and following guidelines.
Surprised to find the posts deleted after getting on today, and curious I searched for the image to find it reuploaded by the user Cat-in-Flight.
I checked the reason for deletion, seeing the following: https://imgur.com/a/xukvZVy

The flag says inferior/duplicate, but the images are the same resolution from the same source, and were clearly posted first based on image number.

Incorrect. Your image is 1200x1200 the replaced images are 2500x2500

Conclusion: When you retrieve images from twitter, make sure you open the direct image in the browser, and add :orig to the end of the URL, this gives you the full sized image in comparison to the compressed image that the standard URL shows.

Your Post: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Div3x0YUwAEV90L.jpg
Replaced Post: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Div3x0YUwAEV90L.jpg:orig

Though do note, that it is still possible for the replaced image to be deleted as well, for if the image is of the same or greater resolution as Cat-in-flight's version but in a PNG format, than the twitter JPG would be deleted. As PNG files are better, and have a crisper image most times.

I don't think a larger image is higher quality, the full size is definitely more pixelated. Is it wrong to post a smaller, clearer image? I don't want to have them deleted in the future.

TheOmegaAlpha said:
I don't think a larger image is higher quality, the full size is definitely more pixelated. Is it wrong to post a smaller, clearer image? I don't want to have them deleted in the future.

If the smaller image is the true size of an image, than the larger one would be deleted. But the website only wants The highest available quality.

I'm sorry, I don't think that answers my question.

Twitter hides the original resolution. You grabbed the "easily available full size," while Cat-In-Flight grabbed the original full size, which is greater. You can find this yourself by suffixing the URL to the source with :orig.

The artist themselves might have a better copy. You can try sending them a note on Furaffinity and asking if the original is available, as they sadly didn't fix them there (They're still JPG (despite saying they're png) and are the default limit of 1280).

you posted downscaled preview version, and cat-in-flight posted the original size

Thank you all for the repetitive information, I'm sure I'll get it in a few more times.

TheOmegaAlpha said:
I'm sorry, I don't think that answers my question.

basically, the only time smaller resolution images will be accepted over the larger images is if the larger images were artificially upscaled and aren't the true size of the image.

https://e621.net/wiki/show/howto:sites_and_sources

This link teaches people how to get the best quality images from various sites, Taking the time to make sure that your upload is the best publicly available quality makes it very unlikely that your post would later be deleted for being inferior.

TheOmegaAlpha said:
Thank you all for the repetitive information, I'm sure I'll get it in a few more times.

Not with that attitude.

Versperus said:
basically, the only time smaller resolution images will be accepted over the larger images is if the larger images were artificially upscaled and aren't the true size of the image.

https://e621.net/wiki/show/howto:sites_and_sources

This link teaches people how to get the best quality images from various sites, Taking the time to make sure that your upload is the best publicly available quality makes it very unlikely that your post would later be deleted for being inferior.

Well, if the higher resolution is a compressed JPG and zero-artifact PNG is only available in a slightly smaller format, I think we prefer the samller one. That's why I specified that the ones on Furaffinity are still JPG despite pretending to be PNG.

TheOmegaAlpha said:
Thank you all for the repetitive information, I'm sure I'll get it in a few more times.

i really dont think that passive aggressiveness is needed here

Let's just all try to be nice, okay? <3

TheOmegaAlpha said:
I don't think a larger image is higher quality, the full size is definitely more pixelated. Is it wrong to post a smaller, clearer image? I don't want to have them deleted in the future.

Generally speaking, we want the highest quality picture the artist has uploaded.

This is USUALLY, in this circumstance, the :orig or something like that.

In MOST CIRCUMSTANCES the larger artist-posted picture is going to be better quality, clearer, etc.

To be honest, I'm a little horrified at the quality of that picture. In both sizes. I generally agree that the smaller picture looks better.... but this is usually NOT the case.

I don't know what to do here. This situation is pretty unusual, and I've not yet dealt with a situation like this. Hopefully someone wiser and more experienced can weigh in :)

But generally speaking, we want the biggest, highest quality picture we can. Usually it's the smaller images that have more troubles.

SnowWolf said:

I don't know what to do here. This situation is pretty unusual, and I've not yet dealt with a situation like this. Hopefully someone wiser and more experienced can weigh in :)

Allmigty Mairo, god of filetypes, condemner of compression, bane of artifacts, share your endless wisdom with us simple mortals.
May png rise above the Cloud, and may jpeg burn in hell.
Amen

MyNameIsOver20charac said:
Allmigty Mairo, god of filetypes, condemner of compression, bane of artifacts, share your endless wisdom with us simple mortals.
May png rise above the Cloud, and may jpeg burn in hell.
Amen

The artist doesn't inform their fans of other sites they are on, the only things I've found is twitter ko-fi and twitter.

SnowWolf said:
I don't know what to do here. This situation is pretty unusual, and I've not yet dealt with a situation like this. Hopefully someone wiser and more experienced can weigh in :)

Big image good. Small image bad. Don't upscale the uploads. This incredibly short summation brought to you by me just waking up.

MyNameIsOver20charac said:
Allmigty Mairo, god of filetypes, condemner of compression, bane of artifacts, share your endless wisdom with us simple mortals.
May png rise above the Cloud, and may jpeg burn in hell.
Amen

LOL!! This made me giggle. Thanks!

TheOmegaAlpha said:
Thank you all for the repetitive information, I'm sure I'll get it in a few more times.

People are trying to answer your question. Don't be rude.

Versperus said:
The artist doesn't inform their fans of other sites they are on, the only things I've found is twitter ko-fi and twitter.

Did you miss my own post on the matter? I included a link to their FurAffinity page, where you can actually send them a note.

Furrin_Gok said:
Did you miss my own post on the matter? I included a link to their FurAffinity page, where you can actually send them a note.

I meant publicly, like having it noted on their websites "You can find me here"

Versperus said:
I meant publicly, like having it noted on their websites "You can find me here"

Ah, yeah, I had to look for it manually there.

e621:image_quality

howto:sites_and_sources#twitter

Here's pretty much whole answer.

TheOmegaAlpha said:
I don't think a larger image is higher quality, the full size is definitely more pixelated. Is it wrong to post a smaller, clearer image? I don't want to have them deleted in the future.

What you are getting is supersampling effect. You are constraining high amount of detail in small area, meaning that all the smaller mistakes get smoothed out and with twitter applying high amount of JPG compression, lower resolution also has smaller areas of single color which makes compression artifacting less noticeable, even though it's identical.

So there are reasons why smaller version might initially look better for you, but it's definitely not. Especially when you start to look up finer details on the image, it gets clear that lower resolution kinda mushes them together.

Here's comparison of your upload on left, new upload on right, something like eyelashes you can't even see if they exsist on your upload:
https://puu.sh/D022N/456860765b.png

As others have been discussing above, neither versions are ideal as both are compressed to shit, so most ideal situation would be to get copy from artist directly or from website that does not fuck the files to this degree, thus far only twitter and furaffinity are found and both destroy artwork.

TheOmegaAlpha said:
I'm sorry, I don't think that answers my question.

TheOmegaAlpha said:
Thank you all for the repetitive information, I'm sure I'll get it in a few more times.

What kind of answer are you then wanting? Because you asked question and it was answered, but you are refusing the answer because you didn't like it.

The higher resolution image in this case is also higher quality and we try archive highest quality variations. To avoid further deletions like this in future ensure you are getting highest quality version from the website you are getting the artwork from.

Also it's technical limitation of the website, generally one post can only have one file attached to it, so to replace the file, new post has to be made and old deleted.