This is a short yet interesting one. I can’t imagine that I am the only one with this question or problem.
I tried to find an answer to this question many times out there but I got lost and in the end I got distracted and wasn’t really sure what I was looking for in the first place.
Here is the situation and the problem:
I downloaded a photograph with the following properties:
Measurements 1600 x 1200 (You’ll agree that this is quite large)
Horizontal resolution 72 dpi
Vertical resolution 72 dpi
Bit depth 24
If you take a look at the photograph (that will open in it’s original size in a new window) you’ll agree with me that the quality is astounding when you keep in mind that the file size is just
256 KB
(Yes, this are fucking kilobytes!)
Depending on your browser you have to click somewhere on the photograph to increase it to its original size, what’s huge.
The big question is:
How are they doing this?
How do they get a picture that big into a file size that small? There is no way of doing this in Photoshop. You always end up with a picture of several MB’s.
If there is one of my dear readers with an answer or if you know someone with the answer to this question, I know there are many people who are very grateful. Do you know which program they use? Please let us know.
Thank you very much in advance! Of course I’ll let you know in a future post and/or in the comment section if I find the answer in the meantime somewhere else.
I just got another example from my Twitter friend Hklbry: http://www.crepehanger.com/images/mariotest1.jpg
This is a large photograph with a unusual small file size as well.
Of course once they are that small they will stay small, even if you are saving them with Photoshop. But if you make a photograph like that with your camera and then save it on your computer you never get it under several MB’s.
The quality of this picture isn’t that high. It is a bit unsharp and does not have many details.
Hi Ulrich,
But this one has http://mario-live.com/images/misc/japanese-beauty.jpg
Not really and the quality isn’t perfect. There is a big white area in this picture and the rest isn’t 100% sharp, too. With a low quality jpeg compression – if you look closely, you can see some artifacts (e.g. the hair, the text in the top right corner) – it is possible to achieve a filesize like that.
You are right! Something on this picture had distracted me from paying attention to this. I think it was her bracelet.
But now I see these artifacts as well.
When I processed the pictures to this post http://mario-live.com/blog/2009/05/what-offline/ I was going crazy because they had such a large file size compared to the picture above.
“Something on this picture had distracted me from paying attention to this.”
Yeah, that might be possible
“When I processed the pictures to this post I was going crazy because they had such a large file size compared to the picture above.”
But you have achieved a really good quality!
I do not remember where I had read that, but some people suggest to blur the image slightly before compressing it. Another trick would be to only blur some areas of the picture (for example the background), but this can be very time-consuming…
Though it’s slightly more time consuming it’s a great idea and worth considering! At least as long as the background isn’t already blurred due to the f-stop you’ve chosen on you camera.
In Photoshop, Save for Web. Here are my settings
Choose JPEG
Check Optimized
Quality: 25
You should get a really good result.
I should have mentioned that my photo is 1944×2592 pixels, much larger than the ones you featured.
Thank you all guys!
After the conversations here and on Twitter, I tried it again and to my amazement I have to say now it works with Photoshop. This make me feel a little retarted
Here is what I did:
1.) I opend a picture with the measurements 3888 x 2592 in Photoshop CS3.
2.) In the menu I clicked on Image -> Image Size and changed it to 1800×1200.
3.) Then I clicked on File -> Save for web and devices… where I choose for the default setting of 65% quality.
…the result was that the file size shrunk to 268 kb with a very good quality.
Of course not the full totally sharp quality as Ulrich already pointed out, but it had the quality that ….ed me off in the first place when in one way or the other my results where ending in a large amount of blocks and artifacts.
Again, thanks to Hklbry, Jason, Ulrich and Nathanael!
Have a nice weekend guys and have fun with taking photo’s if you do so.
There is an easier and quicker way of achieving this, i.e. producing a large-size good quality photo with low kb size.
I use Microsoft Windows Image Resizer (within Windows Explorer window). It’s a case of simply right-clicking on a photo to achieve the same result. Try it!
You can download the free tiny add-in Windows programme at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx. The download for “Image Resizer” is on the right side.
And for instructions (if necessary) go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/learnmore/tips/eschelman2.mspx.
With Windows Image Resizer I tend to use the ‘Large’ option usually, but the “Advanced” option will achieve the same result as the Japanese Beauty photo.
Bear in mind that the Japanese beauty photo was snaped with a high-end (and very expensive) 10.1 megapixel Canon EOS Digital SLR. For examples of using Windows Image Resizer go to http://www.miryamstenger.com/mario_photos.htm. My camera is but a simple 6 mgp HP Photosmart M525 so the quality of the photos I took cannot compare to that taken with the Canon camera.
Great Miryam!
Thank you for your effort. I’ll check this and try this out. You have very nice animals by the way.
I use a Canon EOS 400D with 10.1 pegamixel for my photographs.
The photo of the Japanese girl is taken with more expensive version indeed.
I put the download link for the image resizer down here for those who want to try it as well:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/ImageResizerPowertoySetup.exe