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Image resize optimisation
Quite odd this, but interesting.
I’m resizing all my thumbnails in Photoshop, but find that despite reducing the dimensions it’s producing substantially bigger files – 40k jpegs for example, instead of 6k jpegs. If I reduce the output quality to generate a similar size file, the quality is unusable.
Any ideas? Its quite odd – a smaller dimension image saves as a much bigger file. That shouldn’t happen!
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Re: Image resize optimisation
do you use “save for the web”?
Yiannis
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NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Image resize optimisation
James,
I’m not familiar with Photoshop, as in I don’t have the funds to spend on it. But I found an excellent free program called Xnview for all my cropping and resizing needs, it produces very small jpegs using the Lanczos algorithm and has batch mode.
As a matter of fact, since purchasing a Nikon D40 for Xmas, I’ve been evaluating digital image retouching software. I know Photoshop is the king of the hill but I can’t justify the cost, heck it’s just as much as my camera is worth. I’ve looked at Photoshop Elements 5 and Paint Shop Pro XI but they seem dog slow in operation. Rather than just include image manipulation, they’re adding the kitchen sink of options, like flash galleries and image cataloging.
Maybe I’m ranting but what happened to one tool for a specific job?
PS. In my travels I found this great site called Photo-Freeware.net
Last edited by hcgtv (2006-12-30 16:43:18)
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Re: Image resize optimisation
Using Save for Web, I get small sizes (at ~100×75px). What’s your quality setting? Are you embedding the ICC profile?
@hcgtv – I have Photoshop CS2 (CS3 beta!) and Photoshop Elements 3. Elements will do a lot of what Photoshop can do, just it lacks customizable keyboard shortcuts (at least in 3), and it can be slower. The Camera RAW works well though. The Organizer is slow, but it is convenient to have it manage your photos. If you tag an image with a keyword, it writes it to the image’s metadata, so other programs will see it too. You can also edit with Ctrl+I I think. The organizer can be disabled though.
I do wish there was a good free image editor and organizer. GIMP lacks decent color management (converting from Adobe RGB to sRGB) and is a challenge, for me anyways, to use. digiKam and fspot on Linux look good, but there’s no Windows equivalent (Picasa sucks!).
BTW, educational discount is the way to go! PS for $300 or less at Academic Superstore. Just find a kid, fax them a school ID, and you’re set :D.
Last edited by jm (2006-12-30 19:53:24)
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Re: Image resize optimisation
Thanks guys.
I’m pretty good with PS, and it should perform well resizing but for some strange reason isn’t.
I had a vague notion that the server image scripts TXP uses to create thumbs might be extremely efficient and advanced, and PS can’t match them. But I think that’s unlikely – you’d expect the reverse of that.
PS is overkill for photos because it has lots of graphic stuff you never use. Its possible there may be a better app; the industry uses a few others – can’t recall their names – but its so laborious researching software I’ve never done it. I find actually, what you need for photos is fairly basic.
Theres no logic to this. I’ve got small txp created thumbs at about 6k and resizing them smaller (160 × 107 px) makes them massively bigger files. To get an equivavalent file size, the quality is totally unuseable.
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Re: Image resize optimisation
jm,
I’ve used Photoshop 7 on a friend’s machine but it seems like it takes forever to get a good handle on it. If I were in the design side of things, I know I would have to bite the bullet and learn it but for the occasional retouching it is a bit of overkill like James says. It’s a shame that there is a lack of a good simple editing program and I’ve tried just about everything out there. For now, I’m using the Gimp on my Debian workstation, at least it’s free.
On the organizer side, I was an Acdsee user until I came across Xnview, it’s what Acdsee was back in the lean and mean 3.x days, today Acdsee is a bloated piece of digital bits.
We Love TXP . TXP Themes . TXP Tags . TXP Planet . TXP Make
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#7 2006-12-31 09:01:33
- Mary
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- Registered: 2004-06-27
- Posts: 6,236
Re: Image resize optimisation
JPGS are a lossy format, so that’s to be expected (Google for more info on that). You will need to re-create your thumb from the original in order to keep the better quality and small file size, rather than modifying the thumb itself.
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Re: Image resize optimisation
although the engine is the same did you try imageready?
Also there used to be a macromedia product for image optimisation but I forgot its name and macromedia is not around anymore anyway. If you are using a mac did you try GraphicConverter? Also there’s Aperture from apple and finally the excellent open source gimp
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Image resize optimisation
You’ve yet to detail your workflow in Photoshop, just said it isn’t working for you, so I went to your site and grabbed this image.
Your thumbnail of it is 160×120, 7.11kb.
I opened up the full size image in Photoshop CS2, downsized it to 160×120, laid some unsharp masking on it (120%, 0.3, 1), and then went to File > Save For The Web. Quality setting 55% gives you the 7.08kb jpg below.
So it would appear that the problem is something in your PS preferences or your process for creating thumbnails.
TextPattern user since 04/04/04
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Re: Image resize optimisation
Thanks Reid. Just replicated that myself (minus USM, which wasn’t necessary), and what you say appears to be correct. It appears that Save-for-Web is the key to this: it appears that it uses different algorithms to the ‘standard’ Save interface. It’s a bit of a mystery since you alter the same parameters, but they have a different result.
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