Images Uploaded to Story Maps Have Resolution Determined by Sidebar Width - Affecting Quality When Images Are Clicked to Full-Screen

[JosephHakam1]

The resolution of uploaded images is based on the space it is allowed to take up in the sidebar, even when the image is blown up to full-screen. By choosing a wider sidebar our images were allowed to be displayed in higher resolution for full-screen viewing.

Is it possible/are there plans to allow users to choose at what resolution images are uploaded into our story maps? This would help greatly for graphics and charts where resolution and the ability to open images into full-screen viewing is necessary.

[OwenGeo]

Hi Joseph -- I'm sorry you are seeing an image quality issue. The builder always uploads the original quality image, and then it'll send a optimized, resized version of the original to the browser depending on what size the image needs to be based on where it is in the story and the device screen size. This includes if you click to expand an image.

I just did some testing with different sidecar panel sizes and didn't see any issues. Can you please share a screenshot of the issue you've observed so we can troubleshoot it?

[KarolinaJanik]

I'm also currently experiencing this issue with sidecar photo content in a story that was created months ago. The quality of the images inserted in the text section of sidecar was never great, however, as of October updates the image quality has degraded significantly. Although the quality is still lower than when the story was created (and not acceptable, my graphs are barely legible), changing the size of the panel seems to be the only thing that marginally improves the image quality. This is not impacting the media content panel in the sidecar, just the text panel.

[JosephHakam1]

Hi Owen, thanks for responding. The behavior observed is in the "floating panel" version of the sidecar story.

As you can see in the attached pictures, the graph is completely illegible if put into a "skinny" floating panel. If placed into a wider floating panel, it still gets pixellated but not nearly as badly.

[JennyRassmus]

We are also experiencing this problem in a story map created a few moths ago. All of a sudden the images in a sidecar is of a terribly low quality when you click to enlarge them.

[OwenGeo]

Thank you for reporting this issue. We have an active case that we are investigating related to image quality. We will update this thread when we have more information.

[EricHagen]

I'm experiencing a similar problem. Multiple images in Storymaps that I created months ago are now displaying lower image quality. This is happening both for images used in a sidecar, as well as cover images. I assume that my issue is related to the others in this thread, but I thought I'd add my case to the story. I'm hoping this gets fixed, because the pixilation of an image takes it from crisp and beautiful to drab.

[OwenGeo · Accepted solution]

This issue was resolved in December 2020. Please see this thread for more details.