I noticed the updates to the site design (most of which look like they hired a designer who was straight out of taking a semester-long web design course) but read the update log just now and noticed something that's pretty relevant to us here:

New QHD Resolution for ALL and UHD for FA+!

We’ve also nearly doubled our default resolution for all standard uploads! Regular users will be able natively post up to QHD resolution (3.7 megapixels, 2k,1440p, 2650x1440) and FA+ users net an additional upload limit to UHD (4k, 2160p, 8.3Mpix, 3840x2160).

With this slight increase FA might actually become a reasonable source for uploading some artists' works, although I've seen plenty of images elsewhere that exceed even the FA+ user limit and FA+ users actually have to pay for that size cap.

With the higher limit being paywalled now, I'm concerned that they might have patched the workaround that lets you upload images of any resolution, which a lot of artists I've been uploading from have been using. I'm yet to have time to attempt this myself, so if anybody can confirm whether it works or not that'd be real helpful.

I'm pretty sure the default is also getting increased, it's just that FA+ gives even higher resolutions. at least that's what I think in that one Twitter post they made... if I remember correctly

They "fixed" the re-upload workaround... It's always good to see if a company removes a feature, just to put it behind a paywall... I know servers are not for free, but what FA does is just commercializing the fandom, and I hate it.

dubsthefox said:
They "fixed" the re-upload workaround... It's always good to see if a company removes a feature, just to put it behind a paywall... I know servers are not for free, but what FA does is just commercializing the fandom, and I hate it.

This is the heart of the matter. The resolution limit is now clearer, but a formerly free feature of high-resolution uploads is now locked behind paid membership. Fur Affinity dropped the ball here and added a restriction that no other furry-focused art website has.

dubsthefox said:
They "fixed" the re-upload workaround... It's always good to see if a company removes a feature, just to put it behind a paywall... I know servers are not for free, but what FA does is just commercializing the fandom, and I hate it.

The FA folks don't seem to be able to improve their site without shooting themselves in the foot in the process.

Isn't the "modern" layout (which I refuse to use because it looks like hot fucking garbage to me) also letterboxed to all hell on 4K monitors?

dubsthefox said:
They "fixed" the re-upload workaround... It's always good to see if a company removes a feature, just to put it behind a paywall... I know servers are not for free, but what FA does is just commercializing the fandom, and I hate it.

I wouldn't really expect anything else from them at this point... I guess I'll have to message some of the artists I upload from and ask for better resolution copies because some were previously uploading 5000px+ PNG files to FA and now they'll be... 1440p JPGs.

bitwolfy said:
The FA folks don't seem to be able to improve their site without shooting themselves in the foot in the process.

And for some reason no matter how many times they shoot themselves in the foot, FA remains the dominant place for furry art despite numerous competitors that are infinitely better always being launched.

dubsthefox said:
They "fixed" the re-upload workaround... It's always good to see if a company removes a feature, just to put it behind a paywall... I know servers are not for free, but what FA does is just commercializing the fandom, and I hate it.

I hate it. I uploaded a 3000x3033 picture to FA and it only comes up to 1909x1930. I just wish that InkBunny would allow sexual images with humans and then many people would just move over there instead since it would have everything they need. The tag system is decent and being able to have multiple images per post is great. If InkBunny and DeviantArt are able to host larger images, what's stopping FA?

dubsthefox said:
They "fixed" the re-upload workaround... It's always good to see if a company removes a feature, just to put it behind a paywall... I know servers are not for free, but what FA does is just commercializing the fandom, and I hate it.

song said:
This is the heart of the matter. The resolution limit is now clearer, but a formerly free feature of high-resolution uploads is now locked behind paid membership. Fur Affinity dropped the ball here and added a restriction that no other furry-focused art website has.

To be clear, the re-upload trick wasn't a feature, it was a (long standing) bug. The entire site was supposed to be limited to 1280x1280, all uploads were shrunk to fit that size as necessary. But some people found that the reupload form didn't check and resize uploads like it was supposed to, and began exploiting the fact. And FA being FA, didn't get around to fixing their site.

It does suck either way, but a silver lining is that many of the artists that never bothered with the reupload trick will now have larger uploads (and it does seem to be pixel count based, rather than strict width or height limits, as I've seen plenty of uploads taller than 1440 pixels, but still within the 3.7 megapixel size). And when it does resize, it keeps the original format (PNGs stay PNGs, so maintain transparency and don't get compression artifacts when they are resized). It's also not as anal as Twitter about needlessly resizing images dimensions to 2048 when it's near to it (it's bad enough for Twitter to recompress JPGs, but to resize it as well is just insulting).

What really smells to me, though, is this idea that it's for server space or bandwidth. Why would you limit resolution if you're concerned about file size? PNGs fitting the free 2K limit can have significantly larger file sizes (and thus take up more server space) than 4K JPGs. Yet these rules will happily allow flooding 2K PNGs taking up several MBs each all over the place for free, while a occasional 4K JPG at a modest 1MB needs $8 a month. If you're really hurting for server space or bandwidth, I'd think a better tact would be to limit file sizes (and maybe limit the number of daily or hourly uploads¹) for free accounts. That way people more responsible for using server space or bandwidth are the ones to pay for it, unlike how the current resolution limits work.

¹ FA already has anti-flooding rules, but they never seem to be enforced. People will still regularly dump dozens of image in a short amount of time, flooding our notifications and making it harder to notice art by other people who aren't flooding during that time. To say nothing that people who do it seem to think they're the only one that matters, so it's also not a rare occurrence that multiple people will flood at the same time, making it worse. It damn annoying.

watsit said:
To be clear, the re-upload trick wasn't a feature...

Ok, it wasn't a feature, but people got used to it. I mean, 2k for everyone is cool, but a limit of 4k sucks. On some reference sheets, even 4k is not enough to show all details. 4k? Come one, it's 2022, duh.

watsit said:
To be clear, the re-upload trick wasn't a feature

One that they encouraged users to use. It was even noted on the upload page for several years that you could use it.

votp said:
Isn't the "modern" layout (which I refuse to use because it looks like hot fucking garbage to me) also letterboxed to all hell on 4K monitors?

There's significant pillarboxing on my 1440p monitor. I don't know what this obsession is with web pages having their width restricted like that, you have to design for displays of varying width anyway (even if you're just focused on mobile, as different devices have different resolutions and they can switch between landscape and portrait layout on the fly). It's not just FA that's done it, but being an art site, you'd think they'd be a little more conscientious of allocating screen space to show the art properly.

Also I hate that I can't middle-click on images to view it full size in a new tab anymore. Middle-clicking does nothing, and when you left click on the image, it does the annoying Twitter thing of showing the full image on top of the page, shrunk to fit the screen (where taller images lose all detail). I have to scroll down below the image and middle-click on Download to view it full size.

dogenzaka said:
I hate it. I uploaded a 3000x3033 picture to FA and it only comes up to 1909x1930. I just wish that InkBunny would allow sexual images with humans and then many people would just move over there instead since it would have everything they need. The tag system is decent and being able to have multiple images per post is great. If InkBunny and DeviantArt are able to host larger images, what's stopping FA?

Well, DA has had some... practices to get money. They started a paid subscription thing well before FA, and they started a store where you could sell your images through them that they get a cut off (which people have complained they've been lax about dealing with stolen or traced art being sold that way). DA is also not furry-specific, so probably have more options for getting money from sponsors or advertisers. InkBunny is quite niche (a lot of people avoid it because they allow cub porn) so probably don't have an active user base quite the size of FA, keeping costs down.

kiranoot said:
One that they encouraged users to use. It was even noted on the upload page for several years that you could use it.

I don't know whether to appalled or impressed at such ineptitude.

This isn't an increase. It's a decrease.

Things like this are why e6 is my primary gallery site despite everyone telling me that's a horrible idea.

Ah, Waiting for this thread to pop up, Dood ╹‿╹)~★

2 cents from a causal user of the site that uses about 6 other platforms simultaneously,
I haven't noticed a difference besides the new interface (Looks cool by the way ◠‿◠).
The takeaway of flash is the most significant change I've noticed since my time there.
If it isn't a Gif, Doodles Rarely break one megabyte and don't get any bigger than 3500x3500, Dood.

Though that's me personally, For the Detail Devils out there whom's work would totally be impacted
by the quality support I can totally see how this change is a massive one garnering support for the
increases and/or downright disdain for pay-walling the maximum quality. Though if it's what they
gotta do to stay afloat to pay for servers, I can get it, Dood.

notkastar said:
Though if it's what they
gotta do to stay afloat to pay for servers, I can get it, Dood.

post #2925250

votp said:
post #2925250

I know right?!
Upwards of $20,000 a month to run an image website is downright silly expensive, Dood!

And with word that sites like Deviant Art and Newgrounds may cost even more to run,
makes me wonder how much it cost for e621 to keep doing what it's doing without
getting donations of some sort, Dood
=P

notkastar said:
I know right?!
Upwards of $20,000 a month to run an image website is downright silly expensive, Dood!

And with word that sites like Deviant Art and Newgrounds may cost even more to run,
makes me wonder how much it cost for e621 to keep doing what it's doing without
getting donations of some sort, Dood
=P

VotP is making fun of you for defending FA, not agreeing with you.

votp said:
Isn't the "modern" layout (which I refuse to use because it looks like hot fucking garbage to me) also letterboxed to all hell on 4K monitors?

For me, the modern layout looks fine, I wish I had the option to go back to the one before, but in the settings it has "classic" (which is like, super classic), and modern (which is the current layout). I guess I'm just so used to the weird hybrid of modern and classic.
The letterboxing isn't much of an issue for me, even with using an UWQHD monitor (3440x1440). Though to be fair, I don't use the entire screen space to look at FA.

notkastar said:
Ah, Waiting for this thread to pop up, Dood ╹‿╹)~★

2 cents from a causal user of the site that uses about 6 other platforms simultaneously,
I haven't noticed a difference besides the new interface (Looks cool by the way ◠‿◠).
The takeaway of flash is the most significant change I've noticed since my time there.
If it isn't a Gif, Doodles Rarely break one megabyte and don't get any bigger than 3500x3500, Dood.

Though that's me personally, For the Detail Devils out there whom's work would totally be impacted
by the quality support I can totally see how this change is a massive one garnering support for the
increases and/or downright disdain for pay-walling the maximum quality. Though if it's what they
gotta do to stay afloat to pay for servers, I can get it, Dood.

Take away of Flash? That had nothing to do with FA. Flash across the entire web was removed.

kora_viridian said:
Personally, I cut them a little slack. In 2022, it's hard to find somebody that still knows how to keypunch FORTRAN into IBM cards, get the new cards into the right place in the existing card stack, compile it, run it, print the crash dump, and flip through the greenbar paper to find the bugs. <_<

Given they still have yet to impliment .webm support, and the only permitted audio files are .mp3, .wav, and .mid, I'd actually believe FA's backend runs on punchcards at this point.

lendrimujina said:
VotP is making fun of you for defending FA, not agreeing with you.

I'd say it's up for interpretation, Dood. ╹‿╹)
Was VotP being Positive or Was Votp being negative?
From an image alone, The world may never know~ =‿=)~★

pyke said:
Take away of Flash? That had nothing to do with FA. Flash across the entire web was removed.

Totally, Didn't mean to imply that FA took that away personally,
Just that that's been the biggest change I've noticed from my
time there, Dood. ╹‿╹)

kora_viridian said:
FA posted an update, on the evening of 2022-11-28, that says they know about and are working on the animated GIF issue.

I wonder how they will solve this, because resizing an animated GIF is not that simple as a still image and may result in significant and unacceptable quality loss. The safest approach is not to touch animated GIFs at all and allow to show the original, which is what most of the sites do (including e621) and what FA was doing before the update.