A huge THANK YOU, and a Blogger groan (& FIX)

Firstly, the "THANK YOU".

Oh My Word, the crafting community is so amazing.

I've had a lovely birthday today, and have received some truly gorgeous creations from some of my closest crafting blogpals.

I think (I hope) I've sent you all a personal message, but THANK YOU so much for all the amazing creations I have received today.  Your creations look stunning on your blogs, but are even more beautiful in real life.  It is humbling to receive such beautiful creations that you have spent hours creating, and I will treasure them long after my birthday has passed.

I did take a photo of the little collection of cards I received, but then I thought that I probably shouldn't share their creations on my own blog.  Although I would have linked up their names, it's probably not right for me to display other people's creations without their consent, so I just wanted to say here that I love being part of the craft blogging community and am truly grateful for the friends I've made here over the years.

Thank you.


OK, secondly the grumble (but I do have a solution, finally!)....

Has anyone else noticed that when photos are uploaded to blogger they seem to change in colour?

I noticed it because I like to remove the backgrounds from my images so that the focus is on the creation, rather than the messy backdrop.

Despite me spending time editing out the backgrounds of every photo to pure white (to match my blog background), for the last couple of weeks, when I uploaded the photos, the backgrounds appeared to be "50 shades of grey" (and I'm not talking about the popular 'naughty novel').

Take a look at what I mean below ... on the left is the photo that I uploaded, and on the right is the photo that Blogger actually displayed:

I thought I was going MAD.  It might not look too bad, but there is definitely a grey background to the second image, and the bright oranges in the image appear dull compared to the first image.

I tried editing the photo again, uploaded it again, but still it was grey when it displayed on my blog.

Arrgghhhh.

I spent a week trying different functions, on two different photo editors, before having a breakthrough.
I saved the 'grey' photo that blogger had uploaded back to my computer, and without opening it in any photo editing software I uploaded it again to blogger.  This time I noticed that the background became even darker grey.

My conclusion was that the problem was not caused by my photo editing software.

I Googled the problem, and found that I was not the only one having difficulties.

Here is the link to the forum where I found the solution, (profh0011 wrote the comment which contains the answer) but effectively Google, in their delightful wisdom, apparently decided to enforce a new feature called 'auto-enhance' to all photos uploaded.

Auto-enhance my @rse !!!  

So, I went straight into the settings and removed the so-called auto-enhance, and hey presto, my photos are now exactly as I uploaded them.

After logging a tactfully worded complaint to Google suggesting that they don't default their options to mess up my carefully edited photos without my approval, I reloaded all my affected photos again, complete with pure white backgrounds.

So, if you want to ensure your photos are not similarly ruined 'enhanced' then you may wish to check you have not been given the Google treatment, and if so, consider if you want to remove the feature yourself.

Here's a screen dump of the guilty option box that I have now unticked, but the instructions on the forum link above should also help.

Okies, groan over, and I hope it's helped anyone who's had the same problem.

I'm being taken off out for a slap up birthday meal tonight, so better get my skates on.

Hugs
Annette
xx