Blurry or pixelated images?

There are two possible causes for blurry or bad looking images. The first is that the size setting in the plugin is too small. The second is image quality.

Solving Blurry Images in Mailchimp Email

If the size selected in the plugin settings smaller than the size it must display in the email template, you will get the blur. For example, the RSS size is set to "thumbnail" which can be as small as 80 pixels (px)square and the email template requires a 1000 px x 800 px image. The little thumbnail will have been stretched on your email.

It's a quick fix using our plugin settings.

Head to our plugin page inside your WordPress dashboard.
Set the "RSS image size" option to "full size".
Then run a email test to confirm the issue was resolved.
If still blurry using full size, it means the original image uploaded (native file) is too small. Replace it with a larger image on all affected posts.

Screenshot: Keep in mind that RSS image size provide options in the drop down from size of images established globally on your website media options. Media options are not determined by our plugin.

Can't replace larger image files on posts?

An alternative is to use custom CSS to display the image smaller in the email template. Max width should always be 600px minimum for Mailchimp, so make sure your images are at least that large and ideally exactly that width, with a reasonable height such as 300-500px. If you need help customizing CSS and you are a Premium subscriber, you can reach out to our developers for this level of assistance using Premium email support.

Solving Blurry Images Due to Quality

If the blurry image is not happening in an email campaign, or maybe you already tried the plugin size settings fix above, it is likely due to image quality. This just means that the image file itself is not large enough or maybe poor resolution. With high resolution screens like Apple Retina Display, images used on the web need to be higher quality while still keeping the file size reasonable to load quickly. For example, a 600 pixels wide web page image requires 1200 pixels for optimal Retina Display. In any display, if the image is small and stretched beyond its native size it will begin to look pixelated. This can occur on images that are over optimized for small file size, even if the pixels wide and high are to spec. You can see the blur when you open these files on your desktop before they make it to the site.

Check that the featured image used for the RSS feed is using a high quality image file in terms of resolution (the standard is 72dpi for web) and dimensions (pixels wide or tall).
If you're not sure how wide to make an image a good standard is minimum 1200 pixels wide. Or 2048 pixels wide when spanning edge to edge on a page/screen.
A guideline for file size is under 200kb. That's kilobytes not megabytes "MB"! There's a huge difference in how quickly your pages and emails will load.