Background Showing Up Blurry

  • Good afternoon,

    Got a question about background images here. I am not sure whether this is a WordPress question or just a more general question about how images display on the Web. Either way, I’d love an answer or a reference to another forum where I could get some help.

    Here it goes.

    Using the Newspaper theme by TagDiv. I am also posting this in their help forums. But I have a feeling this issue transcends TagDiv.
    This theme allows you to use an image as the background in your footer section. The theme documentation doesn’t give any guidance about the appropriate size for the footer background.

    I decided to upload a rather large background image because I have been told it is easier to size down than size up. I made two versions of my image, which is of a sword on a pink background. The first is 3840 by 2160. The second is 1920 by 1080. Both images look crisp and clean on Photoshop. After uploading them to WordPress both of them still looked crisp and clean. I sacrificed considerable performance in order to have good image quality.

    I tried using both images as my footer background, and both of them came out extremely blurry. I can’t understand it for the life of me. It isn’t like I uploaded tiny images and told them to cover a large pixel area. I uploaded clean, crisp images of the same size or bigger than any computer monitor and they went from clean to blurry the second I used them as background images.

    Like most questions, the content of this question isn’t solely a “theme” question, solely a “WordPress” question or solely a graphic design question. I’ve noticed that people on these Forums seem to be obsessed with making sure that multi-discipline questions are posted in exactly the right spot. If this isn’t the right spot, I sincerely apologize. And I’d love to know where the appropriate spot is.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • When you upload an image to WordPress, multiple versions are created at different sizes so smaller versions can be loaded for gallery thumbnails etc.. It’s up to the theme which version to use. It sounds like your theme is loading a resized version.

    I suspect that the theme expects a small image so that it can repeat it as a pattern, so only loads the thumbnail version of something. Hopefully the theme developers can tell you how the change this behaviour for that particular theme.

    Thread Starter brianzulberti

    (@brianzulberti)

    Jake,

    Thank you for taking a moment to respond to my question. The theme that I am using, Newspaper, is a very popular magazine-style theme. I can’t for the life of me understand why it would expect small patterned images. However, it does appear clear when I tile it. The problem is that I don’t want to tile it.

    When I upload the image, it appears perfectly clear when I go to Media. It is only when I actually use it as the background for the footer where the blurriness comes into play. That does suggest that this is a theme issue, I agree. I’m going to take my inquiry exclusively to the theme forums. However, if anyone has some insight here, please do chime in.

    Brian, take a look which version of your picture the theme CSS takes. (rignt click – element information) Generally, tagdiv is very fast with proper answers.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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