Resolution Public Service Announcement (Patreon)

I've reuploaded the recent BF pages at a lower resolution for the standalone PNG files. Below explains the reason for my decision up to this point. They're still quite large, so if you're not interested in the reason, feel free to ignore the rest of this post.

Hey guys. Just posting this as a status update on some adjustments I've still been tinkering with. I'm working with methods and tools to increase output, but of course I don't want this to prove too detrimental to quality, so I've been messing around with export settings to optimize the changes. I've been trying to work with the Real G-Pen tool in Clip Studio Paint, which has a bit more texture to it as it's intended to replicate the little bit of extra bleed that's expected when using traditional ink on paper. I like this due to it not only being much more comfortable to work with (both in time and physically for my hand), but when used properly it really does aid in giving more of a traditional and less of a digital look to line quality.

The complication is that such tools are intended to look cleaner on export at intended view resolutions while not looking optimal at full work resolution, but as you may know I try to upload files at full resolution for patrons. Due to it now being made for the intended export resolutions I upped the size of my canvas to 3700x6400, so that the resized export would be proportionally larger. However, this has come with some problems that affect the full resolution versions when uploaded as PNGs.

The issue is pixelation/moire that comes with scaling down such a large lossless file. At first I attempted to remedy this issue by uploading the full size files as JPEGs. As much as some people seem to hate JPEGs for whatever there reason may be, there are times and places where compression is actually beneficial; textures and patterns are some of those areas. However, due to people asking me why I would bother with JPEG, and the hate that it seems to get, I'd still rather upload as PNG to avoid the controversy.

Upon reverting back to PNG, the images still suffered terrible moire for me. This is the exact same issue I was combating when I was trying to figure out how to upload screentones without terrible image tearing. The reason for this is that programs typically struggle to render textures and patterns when scaling down lossless images, so it leads to sharp, pixelated lines that can appear jagged and blocky. This seems to be even worse for some viewers with the more standard 1920x1080 displays, including my own when I scaled down my resolution. As such I've decided that the best way to counter this is to simply not upload my base files at full resolution, but instead at 50% resolution, to get it nearer my usual upload size. What this does is still allow me to upload in a lossless file format while still being able to compress down textures and patterns that I may use.

The 50% resolution is still 1850x3200. Given that a 4K display only has a 2160 vertical resolution, which is likely more around 1800-1900 usable area when all top/bottom menus are considered, it's still being downscaled at least 50% for 4K viewers, and even further as display resolution decreases. For textures and patterns this can effectively seem as 50% compression without actually having to do any data compression, so it should work out significantly better when scaling down.

If you have any further insights or concerns, feel free to let me know in the comments below.