Reducing Photos (Mac and PC)

[nickao]

1

 

[Michael Kellough]

The way Matthew formats his pictures to be so big and clear, yet stay within the limits of the forum picture size rules is great!

Nick

Yeah, I'm jealous. My pictures are puny by the time I get them below 125k.

 

[Matthew Schenker]

... My pictures are puny by the time I get them below 125k.

Changing a photo's pixel size is not the only way to reduce it's KB size.  In other words, you don't necessarily have to reduce a photo's dimensions to get it to under 125KB. 

Quite often, you just need to reduce the quality from 100 down to 75 or 80.  That makes no apparent difference in the screen quality, but the file is reduced quite a bit in KB size.  The easiest way, for me, is to use a little free program called Irfanview.

Matthew

 

[Michael Kellough]

... My pictures are puny by the time I get them below 125k.

Changing a photo's pixel size is not the only way to reduce it's KB size.  In other words, you don't necessarily have to reduce a photo's dimensions to get it to under 125KB. 

Quite often, you just need to reduce the quality from 100 down to 75 or 80.  That makes no apparent difference in the screen quality, but the file is reduced quite a bit in KB size.  The easiest way, for me, is to use a little free program called Irfanview.

Matthew

Thanks for the tip Matthew. I've been lazy and only using iPhoto which doesn't seem to let me do that.
Hopefully it does and someone will instruct me.

 

[Matthew Schenker]

Michael,
Don't know anything about iPhoto.  But I've tried several graphics programs for simple tasks, and nothing comes close to the straightforward nature of Irfanview.  It's just amazing for resizing/resampling, saving into various file formats, and cropping.

For more advanced tasks, I use The GIMP, a free program that does everything you can do in Photoshop Express (maybe more).

Matthew

 

[Bill Wyko]

Very Nice. Has a nice elegant look to it. I'm doing a repair on a mirror for a friend right now. He moved to Tucson AZ from PA. The Oak frame dried up and shrank down to the mirror and split it into 3 pieces. He took the mirror out and I'm putting it back together and opening up the area where the mirror goes in. It must have shrank about 3/8ths of an inch, it really blew itself to pieces. It's a hand carved piece with all the grain going the same way. I don't think you would ever have an issue with yours with the grain surrounding the mirror. Again, nice job.

 

[Michael Kellough]

... My pictures are puny by the time I get them below 125k.

Changing a photo's pixel size is not the only way to reduce it's KB size.  In other words, you don't necessarily have to reduce a photo's dimensions to get it to under 125KB. 

Quite often, you just need to reduce the quality from 100 down to 75 or 80.  That makes no apparent difference in the screen quality, but the file is reduced quite a bit in KB size.  The easiest way, for me, is to use a little free program called Irfanview.

Matthew

"IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista."

I need something for Mac. My wife is a professional but I have to fill out a requisition order to get her to do something like that for me.

 

[Scott W.]

.......... I've been lazy and only using iPhoto which doesn't seem to let me do that.
Hopefully it does and someone will instruct me.

Hi Michael,

I use Photoshop but here are the steps in iPhoto:

Select your photo in iPhoto
[attachimg=1]

Notice in the lower left it gives you the size and dimensions. (red arrow)

On the top menu, select file then export. You will get the following pop-up window.
[attachimg=2]

This is where it all happens.
Select file type (kind) Jpeg
Select Quality (this is what Matt was referring to)
Select the Dimension and give it a size -or- as I have done just set the largest side and it will scale accordingly.
Set the file name etc. in the drop down.

Here is the result in the above photo with the settings from the pop-up window shown.

[attachimg=3]

Notice the file info in the lower left.

Hope this works for you.

Matt, Feel free to move this to the appropriate place.

Scott W.

 

[Michael Kellough]

Thanks Scott. I need to upgrade then, my version 6 iPhoto doesn't have the Quality option  :-\

 

[Scott W.]

I don't have 6 to check but make sure you have selected Jpeg as type(kind)
Quality only shows up after you select Jpeg for type(kind)

You can also size in preview during the save as  process

And you can use graphic converter (applications - Might be in utilities folder)

Scott W.

 

[Matthew Schenker]

Good Morning,
I'm going to move the last few messages in this topic into the "Photography" section.  As it turns out, we ended up creating a discussion on handling photos and working on a Mac.
Matthew

 

[Michael Kellough]

I don't have 6 to check but make sure you have selected Jpeg as type(kind)
Quality only shows up after you select Jpeg for type(kind)

You can also size in preview during the save as  process

And you can use graphic converter (applications - Might be in utilities folder)

Scott W.

Thanks for your additional tips Scott. My stuff is just too old. My Graphic Converter is for OS9 and iPhoto 6 doesn't have a quality setting, even when exporting as jpg. It's fairly easy to get newer versions of both so thanks for your help.