Wallpapers for saucy salamander are being modified the wrong way, worsening their quality

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

The images submitted to flickr should be off highest resolution, as I believe Flickr doesn't limit the size?!

The package with winning wallpapers has been uploaded into saucy. Which images are of sub-optimal quality?

Well, some of them have a bitblurry edges on 23" monitor with 1920x1080 resolution, but although the resolution is OK, it seems like the pictures were enlarged from smaller to this resolution. Thingvellir, The Out Standing, I am a saucy Salamander, Taxus baccata, Untitled by Garazi Unzeta, Grass, Nylon Rainbow and Oak look perfect to me, but some of others, incl. mine, looks sometimes a bit blurry, like if they were saved to JPEG using something less perfect than 90% of quality settings. This was criticised when Ubuntu 13.04 Wallpaper contest ended and I can see the progress but there is still the place to improve.

I mean, for example, the tree in Mr. Tau had originally smooth blurry branches (intentionally)... now they are perfectly sharp, so flickr have to change them in some way. The colour range is totally different (please see original image reduced to 2560x1600 and extracted from saucy salamander package.

I resized Mr. Tau from original resolution to 2560x1600, 100% jpeg quality, it has about 360KB. Version in saucy salamander package has about 260KB, so somewhere had to be loss of the quality.

So in my opinion, if Ubuntu wants to have nice and sexy wallpapers, to help to make a "wow" effect, try to contact original authors of pictures, they will surely send the original versions resized to demanded size (without quality loss). If not, use the version from flickr. :) Simple yet effective.

I want to say that I am speaking only about technicall quality of images in saucy salamander package, the way how flickr handles them.

Flickr version 2048x ...

Image resized by me to 2560x1600 - smooth branches - OK

Image from saucy salamander package - really sharpened, increased contrast, colours are out.

This seems the flickr do not change it. But somewhere between flickr -> packaging to saucy salamander SOMETHING :D has happened and now we do have absolutely new picture.