Stumped

[DanielLane]

So one of my jobs is shooting photos for a local paper. I live on Kauai, but the main company is based over on Oahu. Because of this, after I shoot and process, I upload to an FTP site for them to use the shots. No big deal right?

Well, over the past few weeks, they have been complaining because they have been getting weird horizontal lines across my photos. They are never in the same place, rarely do they go all the way across the shot, they are not always there but only on a few pics. I have never seen these lines at my end. I have been processing the same way since long before this started. I have not changed anything in the camera except the normal F-stop, ISO, exposure and white balance. I have even uploaded to their FTP, then downloaded back to me and still never seen the lines.

So I can't see much happening at my end and it doesn't seem like its an issue in the FTP uploader I am using. Do any of you have any thoughts as to what it could be?

They are still using the photos but they look horrible. This is a link to a web page they used them on. All of these shots were taken within about 30 minutes at this interview. There are lines in all but one of them, but the lines vary all over the place. I am stumped!

[BuddhaPi]

Looks, sounds like an image software issue, have them open the images on a different machine with different software and see what happens.. do the lines appear when they first open the image or after they resize for web??

[gptwins]

As part of the debugging process, are you able to download your photos from the FTP? If so, download them to a different location on your disk and then see if you can duplicate results. This in conjunction with the other post above will help determine if the images are being being corrupted during the upload or storage process.

[DanielLane]

Ok, So I had some photos I needed to upload to them this morning. I sent them all off, then downloaded them back to my computer to my desktop (not where the originals were) and downloaded again to an external drive. I have now opened every photo into every possible software I have that can open a photo. (All things Adobe, all the different web browsers, All the different paint/graphics apps, preview, even word and excel) I got nothing. no lines anywhere on any of the photos. So that means it's got to be at their end right? I think he is using photoshop though. Not sure what version though. I am on CS4 at the moment, but who knows what they are using. I have sent off a few emails to try and get answers to that, but no reply so far.

*sigh*

annoying stuff.

Thanks for the replies so far. If anyone has any other ideas, I appreciate the input!

[OsmosisStudios]

Is the FTP secured? If not, care to share it with a few of us to help you test it out?

[DanielLane]

Yeah, it's a secure FTP. If I gave it out, I'd probably lose my job.

I think we figured it out though. I usually save images at 360dpi. Thats what the printer I use likes best for doing art prints. The paper normally uses uses 300dpi or even 240dpi. I think the conversions in DPI while he is doing compression at the same time is what has been causing it. I sent him two pics yesterday to go through the normal process. One at 300 and one at 360. The 360 got lines and the 300 was fine. Seems like the problem is solved. =]