Vid Caps Or Over-compressed Pics
 

How is the best way to combat these topics?

I get my pic set which was taken from a movie and I can understand about Vid Caps looking like shit. Correct me if im wrong, but you just have to be more picky when it comes to which stills you use as pics correct?

Secondly, how do you prevent over compress pics? I use photoshop to make my pics a bit bigger to hit the targets the rules state, but is there anything I can do to not over compress pics?

Thanks

I just don't build unless the pics are big enough, if they're too big file-size wise I use Image Optimiser, if they're too big dimension wise I use Fireworks.
Not sure if it's a good idea to try to make pics bigger, I'd think there'd have to be some loss in quality, but I've never tried it.

most of the pics I get my hands on are only about 600x420 or something like that. They don't meet LOR requirements so I got to enlarge them a tad. I usually take them up to 800x600 ish.

Is that whats doing it?

800x600-ish for the 1200 rule?

well, to answer your question, enlarging small pics is not advisable. the usual case would be to have a high res pic scaled down, then sharpened, color corrected then compressed. Photoshop works like a dream for me so i'm not having much problems on these.

well, 800x600 ish ;)

Im very careful when it comes to manipulating pics, I do my best to leave them alone if they are high quality pics but sometimes they are just too small and won't cut it on some link lists.

In the case of Vid caps, the best way to avoid any problems is to not use them :)

Rarely do we see over-compressed pics these days, but we left that in there because it does pop up every now & then.

Very true but what if the set you get is snap shots taken from a movie?
Is it best to avoid them completely or be VERY selective on the ones you use?

Avoid them completely. I don't see a lot of vidcap freesites anymore, why would you want to compete with other builders that are using nice pics.

If you have a sponsor that you want to build for that only has vidcapped images, then suck it up and build some movie freesites.

Gotcha :)