vCard PHOTOs are small

[kocjs]

Thank you for this great app!

MotoX4 lineage os 16.1

Expected behavior:

Export to .vcf preserves the full quality of the image.

Actual behavior:

Exportred contacts have a low resolution image only.

[kocjs]

An other app MC backup can do this, it uses the Type=PNG wile exporting. PHOTO;TYPE=PNG;ENCODING=B:/

[tibbi]

exporting photos as pngs sounds like a terrible idea

[kocjs]

I am just a user, so no idea. but they are not alone. Those are form the thunderbird addon cardbook, and gnome evolution.

BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 PRODID:-//Thunderbird.net/NONSGML Thunderbird CardBook V43.8//EN-US UID:147cf6d6-aabe-4ce4-9dc7-4f52e5bbc011 FN:test N:test;;;; TEL:93457 REV:2020-04-14T20:34:10Z PHOTO;ENCODING=B;TYPE=PNG:iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAB4AAAAQ4CAYAAADo08FDAAAAB

BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 UID:pas-id-3f2aa1b3a033a82611216f4dd6712f2d2fd97074 X-EVOLUTION-FILE-AS:test FN:test N:;test;;; TEL;X-EVOLUTION-E164=3270507711,"+91";TYPE=CELL:009-132-70507711 FN:test N:;test;;; TEL;X-EVOLUTION-E164=3270507711,"+91";TYPE=CELL:00913270507711 PHOTO;TYPE=PNG;ENCODING=b:/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2wBDAAEBAQEBAQEBAQEBA

[tibbi]

I guess these are not real photos, just some small avatars or so

[kocjs]

On the phone i use an app that gets the whatsup profile picture. That's where those png probably come form, they have a size of about 120kb. Contacts are clearly recognizable.

Your app transforms them to jpeg, but the size goes down 4-5kb, contacts are barely recognizable.

However if i use a jpeg it results like this.

BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 PRODID:-//Thunderbird.net/NONSGML Thunderbird CardBook V43.8//EN-US UID:5bff8a7f-69ee-4c5f-a112-2a5b07e17718 FN:test-tp N:;;;; TEL:666 REV:2020-04-17T20:30:30Z PHOTO;ENCODING=B;TYPE=JPEG:/9j/4QaHRXhpZgAATU0AKgAAAAgADwE7AAIAAAAFAAAAwgEP

[kocjs]

Are there any issues with png in general? Or is it just the size?

[tibbi]

the size, real photos should never be saved as pngs. Are those contacts saved into the "Phone storage (not visible by other apps)" contact source, or some other casual synced device contact source, like your email or so?

[kocjs]

The contacts are saved in an address book provided by DecSynccc

[rezad1393]

bump. exported contact with this app (Also with the android contact app) saves a low resolution version of picture. which I noticed after comparing vcf file produced from various apps. some apps on my phone produce vcf file in range of 800-900 KB and some apps (like simplemobiletools) creates files in range of 150-280 KB. when I open smaller file with an app that can examine vcf, I see that the image is low resolution in smaller file (beside some othe field changes).

[rezad1393]

the size, real photos should never be saved as pngs.

why? we are no longer is the smartphone age. we are in iOS and android age. I think reducing image to a blurry 4kB picture is very bad and a bug. other apps (That are not open source of course) save the image (or a smaller but not that bad version of image)

[RokeJulianLockhart]

Any compression should be lossless. To perform lossy compression is actually harmful to the users. After all, who determines whether a contact's avatar is important? I know some people whose contact's avatars are their sole photographs of them, and are consequently important to them.

[rezad1393]

another option would be to ask user what he wants at the export step. I dont know how android saves contact images but android OS clearly doesn't feel justified to reduce image quality a lot. so the OS doesn't think it needs to do that. then user sees a clear image for its contact. if a contact backup destroys the image quality this bad, then changing this is not a feature request, it is a bug fix request.

I have no idea why the creator of this app choose to do it this way, he had his own reasons. but keeping it this way is a dark mark for this app as it would messes with the most important thing for user (user data) so bad that would cause other users to discourage potential users from this app.

[Charles7z]

This is a pain for anyone who wants to use this app without cloud storage.

You might as well delete all contact photos cause they will look like sh!t every time you hand to restore. At least the big ugly letter next to each contact from then on is clear 🤣

[Charles7z]

I tested several apps to backup contacts and keep reasonable image size. The only one that worked is super backup:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.idea.backup.smscontacts