liveportfolio Live portfolio is misrepresenting my gig

[gajuseidi]

Hi,

while previewing my gig, I noticed something that bothered me and I would like to inquire about it. All gigs have the option for live portfolio to be enabled. Live portfolio is a feature that allows buyers to attach a visual sample of the final completed version of the order to their review. I have noticed that this visual sample in live portfolio seems to be of significantly lower quality than the original file. While this might not be a big problem in some cases, in my case the compression of the file actually misrepresents my gig in a significant way, as I offer services that consist of subtle changes and enhancements (one of the biggest selling points of my gigs is improving the quality of provided photos, which is almost completely negated in live portfolio preview). I have "activate watermark" feature enabled on all of my gigs, therefore all the samples in my live portfolio have fiverr watermarks. Could this be the issue that causes these samples to appear in lower quality? I have seen sellers, whose live portfolios consist of great quality, large size images (presumably original size). I will attach two samples to this post, one is the original before and after file sent to the buyer, and another one is the image as seen in my live portfolio.

Thank you in advance

[lenasemenkova]

4 hours ago, gajuseidi said:

Also, the PDF file does not display a preview when delivered to a buyer, is that normal or some sort of glitch?

Yes, you’re right, the live portfolio samples are either .JPG or .PNG. If only .PDF was delivered, it gets converted to .PNG. If .JPG and .PDF were delivered, .JPG goes into the portfolio. 

The files are scaled down from the original size, too, but the size seems to be random. .JPG files look more damaged. .PNGs are more or less crisp. 

[gajuseidi]

Maybe @lenasemenkova might have any suggestions? I've seen great quality samples in your live portfolio, they're lovely ❤️

[lenasemenkova]

 

Thank you for tagging me (and the kind words) but I’m not sure I can offer any effective secret recipe for this. I don’t do anything to make the samples in the live portfolio look good. The only thing I can think of, the files themselves are mostly 1. pretty big (18x24” on average), 2. vector (shapes with crisp lines that can be resized indefinitely without losing quality). 3. PDF (a good format for said indefinite resizing), 4. light (500 KB - 1 MB because vector tends to weigh next to nothing). So maybe the entire combination of all of those factors (or some of them) somehow magically makes it so the end result doesn’t blur? 

Funny that you mentioned the watermarks. I just checked and my designs don’t have it now (or it doesn’t show up for me because it’s my profile and my portfolio). 

A few years back CS told me that I couldn’t disable the watermark any longer despite the switch still being there. I wanted to because a few of my regulars were bothering me about it but CS said no, the watermark was there to stay on all of the deliveries. And I definitely saw it all over my live portfolio a few months back but now it’s gone. Interesting. 

But yes, I agree that with the kind of services that you offer it’s very counterproductive to have your live portfolio butchered in this manner. It probably has something to do with sizing/formatting of the image. Similarly to how social media graphics would sometimes get completely destroyed after it’s published and you have to tweak the parameters until the end result looks okay. 

Have you looked through your competitors’ work? Do they have the same issue? I’d also write to support@fiverr.com. This is how you can reach them if you have general concerns or suggestions (if you’re not the only person affected and the entire category is suffering). 

Also, have you looked at your gig on your phone? Most of my buyers, if they need to reference my previous work, send me mobile screenshots. So this is where they view the portfolio. If it looks fine there, perhaps it’s not that big of a problem (while still a problem, of course). 

[uk1000]

It probably resaves/recompresses them all (whether they have the Fiverr watermark or not) because all images in the galleries (so not talking about .pdfs) seem to be a max of 680 pixels wide (but with varying height depending on aspect ratio) and some are .jpg while others are .webp - and they're that pixel height max whether or not they have the watermark. I agree that contacting CS about it is probably best as they might have info on the best settings to use (maybe with info from the developers).  Maybe they could have recently changed the settings they use for the images in the live galleries to save space (eg. increased compression).

But it might be that with the Fiverr watermark it affects the image quality a bit more.

[sayedcsee]

A good experience

[andywarburton]

I have a similar situation with my video... the preview that you have to click to launch it is literally a different colour to the video itself, it actually changes colour when you start playing it. It's really annoying because it's auto-generated and there is nothing I can do about it (and it makes it look like it's me that doesn't know what I'm doing when it's actually Fiverrs crappy thumbnail generator or image compression!)

[gajuseidi]

22 hours ago, sayedcsee said:

A good experience

In my free time, I too go on fiverr forums and copy paste a three letter sentence expressing how wonderful it is that other people experience various issues with the platform. Makes me feel so much more productive.

[gajuseidi]

23 hours ago, lenasemenkova said:

The only thing I can think of, the files themselves are mostly 1. pretty big (18x24” on average), 2. vector (shapes with crisp lines that can be resized indefinitely without losing quality). 3. PDF (a good format for said indefinite resizing), 4. light (500 KB - 1 MB because vector tends to weigh next to nothing). So maybe the entire combination of all of those factors (or some of them) somehow magically makes it so the end result doesn’t blur? 

It might be the .PDF part that sort of lessens the compression of the file. I use the same size for live portfolio files as I do for my gig photos, but I've noticed that the compression algorithm is different for those processes. I will try to send a PDF file from now on and I'll see how it goes, if it changes anything. Also, the PDF file does not display a preview when delivered to a buyer, is that normal or some sort of glitch?

23 hours ago, lenasemenkova said:

Have you looked through your competitors’ work? Do they have the same issue? I’d also write to support@fiverr.com.

I have and I would say that mostly they have the same issue. I used to think that their services are really poor because the examples seemed to not show a lot of difference between the before and after, but now I realize that fiverr just likes to mess with the sellers in every way possible. 😄 I have contacted the CS, got a general "these are the minimum requirements for photo size" answer and asked to forward the message to someone who actually understands the compression algorithms and is knowledgeable on this topic.

 

23 hours ago, lenasemenkova said:

Also, have you looked at your gig on your phone? Most of my buyers, if they need to reference my previous work, send me mobile screenshots. So this is where they view the portfolio. If it looks fine there, perhaps it’s not that big of a problem (while still a problem, of course). 

The compression seems to be global, I've checked it and there is no difference on the phone. Thank you a lot for your suggestions, very much appreciated.

[Guest matteo_carmona]

Thank everyone for the information above.

I hope someone can answer a question in this thread for me. I am new to Fiverr, and I have noticed two different Sample Work formats across some Gigs I have analyzed. Some of these are an image and some have a scroll down feature, also it says see the presentation at the top. 
I wonder how to upload this presentation when sending a delivery to a customer, so I can guarantee that if the customer chose to upload the sample work to the live portfolio it will appear as this presentation mode. 

If this is not the right way to solve a question I apologize, I am new to the Forum as well. If someone can point out where to leave questions I will appreciate it. 

 

Good day for y'all,

 

Matt Carmona.

[gajuseidi]

1 hour ago, matteo_carmona said:

Thank everyone for the information above.

I hope someone can answer a question in this thread for me. I am new to Fiverr, and I have noticed two different Sample Work formats across some Gigs I have analyzed. Some of these are an image and some have a scroll down feature, also it says see the presentation at the top. 
I wonder how to upload this presentation when sending a delivery to a customer, so I can guarantee that if the customer chose to upload the sample work to the live portfolio it will appear as this presentation mode. 

If this is not the right way to solve a question I apologize, I am new to the Forum as well. If someone can point out where to leave questions I will appreciate it. 

 

Good day for y'all,

 

Matt Carmona.

That is a great question, actually. My guess would be that the file was uploaded in PDF format (makes most sense to be a presentation, since presentations are mostly either in PPT or PDF formats), but I do not know for sure. If anyone knows, please share it with us.

[gajuseidi]

Yesterday I made a great discovery! 😄

I did an experiment. I started delivering in PDF and PNG formats. When delivered in PDF, it seemed like the clients were not choosing to share the final result in their review or were not able to. BUT, when previewing my gig from a public perspective, I could see the samples in great quality! And the samples had a "view presentation" option on them because they were in PDF format. I guess,  anything that's PDF is a presentation on fiverr.

There is a catch, though. PDF files do not appear on your profile. When you look at the review from there, it seems like the client did not choose to include a live portfolio visual sample with their review. The PDF files only appear when looking at a gig directly.

So, I think the conclusion is this: For live portfolio, it's best to send files in either PNG or PDF formats. The PNG file seems to get compressed less than JPEG and shows up in your profile's review section. While PDF format almost does not get compressed at all! BUT, the sample does not show up on your profile. I hope this discovery helps!

[Zahid I.]

On 8/3/2021 at 11:20 PM, gajuseidi said:

That is a great question, actually. My guess would be that the file was uploaded in PDF format (makes most sense to be a presentation, since presentations are mostly either in PPT or PDF formats), but I do not know for sure. If anyone knows, please share it with us.

I also believe that it's can be done by pdf only, as image is fixed with gig image size scaling.