Help with posting photos

[Dennis Dray]

I have been looking at The Creek for about a year and have finally worked up the courage to post some pictures and ask some questions. I have been frustrated trying to find a way to reduce my jpg files to where they can be posted. Any help would be appreciated. I know I can crop them but that does away with half of the picture. What other options do I have? I have adobe photoshop 2, starter edtion, Publisher 2003, and Kodak Easyshare but haven't had any luck finding a way to reduce the file size. Is there an easy way that doesn't require purchasing more software?

[Jim Becker]

Adjust the size to 600 pixels wide using the image size function in Photoshop Elements and then save a new copy as a jpg, choosing medium or low resolution. That should get your file size small enough as well as make the picture, itself, easy to see without stretching folks' browsers and requiring scrolling. It's also a good idea to use one shot of the "sharpen" function under filters right before your final save to clean up and lost detail from shrinking the pixel map.

[Alan See]

Dennis, Photoshop LE, and Photoshop Elements contain a pretty good optimization routine. Look in the File menu for the option Save For Web this will usually let you reduce the file size by a factor of 5 or so with no noticable loss of on screen picture quality. I don't know which version of Photoshop they started packaging this with, but you might have it. Good luck.

[Dennis Dray]

Adobe Photoshop 2 starter edition doesn't allow the functioning of the photoshop elements action. Any other suggestion other than buying the next edition.

[Brad Smith]

Another forum I frequent has us use this program:
http://www.xat.com/. Use the "image optimizer" choice.

Their rules require an image to be no wider than 400 pix and 20K total so those on dial-up don't have to wait all day. This program makes it very easy to post great looking images within these confines and it is a free download.

[Dan Forman]

Jim---For PS Elements 2, are you saying to sharpen after cropping but before before "save for web" or after. I couldn't find a way to do it while in the save for web process or after. Am I missing something? In the past I have always resorted to playing with contrast and brightness to try to bring images back to life, I bet sharpening will work better.

Dan

[Wes Newman]

Dennis, I have PhotoShop and I still use this freeware program called Irfan View for some things, because of it's speed and ease of use. It can crop and do some modifications. Check it out. http://www.irfanview.com/

[Sam Blasco]

The one time I tried the "save for Web" feature from Elements 2.0, the jpg was accepted at this site, but the pictures were huge in the thread. I've been hesitant since to post pics, but one of these days I'll try again and see if I can tweek it to get the "normal size" pictures others here seem to get.

[Tom Hurlebaus]

Dennis,

Another program you can look at is PIXresizer. I haven't tried it but another message related to this question suggested it.

http://bluefive.pair.com/updates.htm

[John Hemenway]

The one time I tried the "save for Web" feature from Elements 2.0, the jpg was accepted at this site, but the pictures were huge in the thread. I've been hesitant since to post pics, but one of these days I'll try again and see if I can tweek it to get the "normal size" pictures others here seem to get.

I think there is a bit of confusion as to what parts of PhotoShop (Elements) do what kind of resizing. The 'save for Web' does file compression. It makes the file smaller - fewer bytes on disk. It has nothing to do with how big the image is in your web browser.

There are also controls for how many pixels wide/talll an image is (Photoshop menu 'Image/Image Size...'). This affects how large the image is when displayed on the screen. This also effects file size because when you reduce pixels (keeping resolution constant) you reduce information in the file.

How about a real world example? My camera takes images that are 2.1MB JPG files on disk. The pixel size is 2592 X 1944 at 72 pixels/in. Displayed on a computer screen this is 36 X 27 inches! Just a little bit larger than my computer screen ;) First I go into Photoshop's Image/Image Size menu and change the pixel size to 400 X 300 (proportional resizing) and the image will now be 5.556 X 4.167 inches on screen. If I save the file now the file size will be 148 KB (aprox 10 times smaller!). Finally if I use Photoshop's 'Save for web' function I can compress the file size down (and loose some detail). 'Save for web' lets you see just how large the file is and what it will look like. You want to shoot for smallest file that still looks good. In the above example I choose several options in 'Save for web' and got the file down to 8 KB. It doesn't look as good as the 148KB file but it's MUCH smaller file size. It looks the same size in my web browser!

Does this make sense? I'll post some sample pics if you'd like to see the difference between a 148KB file and a 8KB file.

[Doug Shepard]

The one time I tried the "save for Web" feature from Elements 2.0, the jpg was accepted at this site, but the pictures were huge in the thread. I've been hesitant since to post pics, but one of these days I'll try again and see if I can tweek it to get the "normal size" pictures others here seem to get.

John went into the details on how to fix this, but first you've got to realize that it even NEEDs fixing. The biggest problem folks have with this stems from the fact that your picture editor will allow you to view the pic smaller or larger than it's actual size. Some automatically resize the viewed pic to fit the size of the window you have open - without changing the size in the file. Your editor will have some method to view the pic at actual size. Most of them seem to have this on either a 'View' Menu or as a drop down box on the main menu. If you have this set to 'Actual Size' or '100%' you'll be able to see how big (view-wise, not file-size wise) your pic actually is in the file.
Moral of the story - unless you're viewing the pic in Actual Size in your editor, image-size-saved-in-file (and viewed by others that open it) does not equal image-size-you-were-seeing when you edited/saved.

[Jim Becker]

I think there is a bit of confusion as to what parts of PhotoShop (Elements) do what kind of resizing. The 'save for Web' does file compression. It makes the file smaller - fewer bytes on disk. It has nothing to do with how big the image is in your web browser.

Save for Web also allows for resizing in pixels...at least in version 3.0 that I run. I don't use it, prefering to do things manually since I do a bit of retouching, too, but I'm looking right at it "as we speak". Below is a screen image of the same...

[Jim Becker]

The one time I tried the "save for Web" feature from Elements 2.0, the jpg was accepted at this site, but the pictures were huge in the thread. I've been hesitant since to post pics, but one of these days I'll try again and see if I can tweek it to get the "normal size" pictures others here seem to get.

Sam...just resize manually and then save as a jpg. The resulting dialog will have the option to compress. Do use the sharpen filter once after you resize and before you save to restore detail lost when you shed pixels via the resizing. It really does make a difference. But don't do it more than once as it will then add noise...

[John Hemenway]

Save for Web also allows for resizing in pixels...at least in version 3.0 that I run. I don't use it, prefering to do things manually since I do a bit of retouching, too, but I'm looking right at it "as we speak". Below is a screen image of the same...

Well, wadda know, I get to learn another PhotoShop trick. Thanks Jim.

Actually I'm using PS CS and the resize is kinda hidden w/ a tabbed section of the dialog box. At least that's my lame excuse for missing it. :confused: