imaging/computer software question

laurentyvan

When I take a coin picture the result is a picture file somewhere in the 250kb to 500 kb range. In order to make it small enough (50kb) I reduce the picture resolution and size which works, but leaves me with less detail than I'd like. How do I fit the image within the 50kb restrictions and keep image quality? I feel that I don't have some very basic computer skills; this is one such instance.

Compa

The filesize is largely a function of image quality.

To lessen filesize you will have to give up some on quality.

You can go to gray scale instead of color ... that will give you a good savings in size.

There are various versions of jpeg compression ... and various degrees of compression within the various versions. Highline photo editing programs usually offer various jpeg compression schemes. Most are compatable with most any viewer but each one has it's own qualities and failings. I can't recommend one over another for a non-specific photo.

Basically you just have to draw a balance between quality and filesize.

Depending on where the image will be viewed, online on a monitor or printed you can generally drop your dpi (dots or pixels per inch) and not affect image quality (will affect apparent image size).

Play with it!

Compa

PS ...

When you edit a jpeg image, the image has to be decoded (decompressed) for editing and then is recoded and compressed. You do lose detail when doing this. Multiple editing sessions can add up to significant degrading of the image. Try to work with the original tiff image - they are huge but there will not be any loss when editing. just do the final conversion to jpeg when finished.

cacheman

go to www.irfanview.com and download they're freeware. I use it all the time to resize my images. For instance my images come from the camera at 1600 X1600 and I use this software to resize to 400X400 (each side of the medal thus making a combined image of 800W X 400H) for my images I post here. I even use it to resize the images for my sig. You might give it a try.

You might also find out if your ISP provides you with some free server space like mine does. That way you can link your images from there without having the tight size restrictions imposed by CU.

BTW, the image below in my sig is 21K in size

cosmicdebris

Photoshop has a save for web feature which lets you interactively adjust file quality to see how it will effect the image and the file size.