Charlie,

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Fully agree that the photo presentation is not up to par.  It is not as good as Yahoo was.  TVs are moving to 4K and 8K.  Desktops and phones have been providing better and better resolution.  Blurry pictures are not what people want. I heard from someone it was to save bandwidth.  I admit everyone does not have unlimited bandwidth, but unlimited is the trend.  Perhaps a quality option somewhere.  As photo sharing after an event is one our prime uses of Groups.io, I would really like better quality photos.

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All other things being equal (i.e. the image wasn't blurry/messed-up to begin with), the issue is not an image resolution/quality or a bandwidth problem, it's an (original) image resizing issue, and specifically, an image up-sizing issue.

To expand on what Duane said, the problem is that the code behind photos, while it will correctly "shrink/size-down" an image which is larger than the screen photo display area (that black area that contains the image with the < >, and which will vary based on current screen resolution/size used), it will also do the corollary when the image is smaller than the screen photo display area and will "expand/resize-up" that photo to fit that display area instead of displaying it actual/100% size, and this causes small(er) images to become blurry to varying degrees.  You can see what I mean, find a photo which displays blurry when it shouldn't, click on Download to bring it up on screen at its actual size, and you'll notice that it's smaller than the display area, anywhere from a lot smaller to some percentage smaller of the display area.  Then find another image which is rather large to begin with, or upload a test photo that's close or bigger than your monitor's resolution, and you'll notice how that displays fine.

I also do agree, the photo display functionality can use some fixing and also some improvements; for example, the Download button, I don't see why the image is not downloaded automatically (or opened in your graphics app, depending on your settings) when one clicks on the Download button, but instead goes to a different screen where the image is displayed at actual size, and one can then right-click to save the image, that's extra unnecessary work IMO; yes, one can right-click on the Download button and select "Save Link As" and it will save it that way right away, but the average user won't think to do that, initially at least.

The good thing (thank heavens!!) is that, provided the group settings are set accordingly, GIO will not muck around with the actual image's resolution & DPI when it stores the image, and will download the actual original size/rez, unlike FB which will physically alter the image to downsize it AND resample its rez to 300dpi max, before it stores it on its servers.

Cheers,

Christos