6Mb Jpegs?

[North West Tom]

I shoot in Raw, tweak them in PS then save them as Jpegs, but they all seem to be about 6mb. Is there anyway to change that without compromising quality?

[M-J-B]

North West Tom said:

I shoot in Raw, tweak them in PS then save them as Jpegs, but they all seem to be about 6mb. Is there anyway to change that without compromising quality?

Save them with full compression.

It won't make any difference, but will reduce the size as far as can be done.

[flat-planedCrank]

North West Tom said:

I shoot in Raw, tweak them in PS then save them as Jpegs, but they all seem to be about 6mb. Is there anyway to change that without compromising quality?

If your jpgs are saved at the maximum quality setting then you may be reduce this slightly and not see much noticeable difference in the image. However, this is reducing the quality of the image, probably best to do it on an image-by-image basis.

JPG is 'lossy' compression - once data is lost during the compression process it is lost permanently.

(As hard drives are so cheap I wouldn't recommend using JPG as your default storage format. Something like a 'lossless' compressed tif image would reduce the file size (though not as aggresively as jpg) without any reduction in quality.)

[GetCarter]

Yep.. don't EVER save your originals with compression - save as uncompressed (so not JPG... TIF is good), and if you want to send by e mail or bung 'em on here, make a jpg copy and arse about with that, leaving the original untouched.

Edited by GetCarter on Sunday 17th October 20:36

[tamore]

doesn't this depend on what you want to do with them in the future?

[GetCarter]

Well if you are not sure what you might need them for, then save uncompressed.

If you are totally and utterly sure you'll never ever, ever want to print them to any size, then save them as JPGs

However, given the cheapness of digital storage.... etc.

[RobDickinson]

I shoot raw and edit in photoshop.

If I make any pixel level changes (dodge/burn/clone etc) I save the psd as is.

If I dont I resize to web (1200px max) then save for web then save this psd. It includes all the layer changes I've made (levels etc) which I can drag back to the full size raw (which CS5 stores the conversion info for too) - this saves a lot of drive space.

otherwise I just trash the work I do and redo it if I need to revisit the raw.

[rottie102]

GetCarter said:

Well if you are not sure what you might need them for, then save uncompressed.

If you are totally and utterly sure you'll never ever, ever want to print them to any size, then save them as JPGs

However, given the cheapness of digital storage.... etc.

I save them after editing as FULL SIZE JPGs. I know I won't get them any better. That's as "printable" as it gets.

[flat-planedCrank]

Saving as JPG means that it is throwing data away in return for a smaller file size

If you are converting from RAW and then editing I would save as a non-lossy compressed file, this way no data is lost (if you are editing in photoshop then you can zip/rar/etc. the psd file afterwards)


For JPGs with very high quality settings you get into a discussion of whether the reduction in quality really matters - in many cases it probably doesn't. However, if this is your only version of the edited shot then I would suggest saving the absolute best quality image you can.


You can always scale, compress and lose data later, but you can't ever get it back

Edited by flat-planedCrank on Monday 18th October 21:48

[RobDickinson]

flat-planedCrank said:

You can always scale, compress and lose data later, but you can't ever get it back

Unless you go back to the raw (which you should always keep).

Infact apps like lightroom make all this irrelevant anyhow...

[flat-planedCrank]

RobDickinson said:

flat-planedCrank said:

You can always scale, compress and lose data later, but you can't ever get it back

Unless you go back to the raw (which you should always keep).

Infact apps like lightroom make all this irrelevant anyhow...

Indeed
I meant that if you had spent time working in photoshop then saving as JPG is, imo, throwing data away at the 'wrong' time.

[M-J-B]

GetCarter said:

Well if you are not sure what you might need them for, then save uncompressed.

If you are totally and utterly sure you'll never ever, ever want to print them to any size, then save them as JPGs

However, given the cheapness of digital storage.... etc.

Sorry to disagree, but I own a large format printing company and we suggest saving files as jpegs rather than tiffs. To do so has no detrimental effect on the printing of an image, providing the image was large enough to start with. As a rule of thumb, we advise a minimum of 100dpi at full size, and you will achieve photographic results when printed.

With file sizes as they are, unless you are looking at huge prints (say 3m x 11m) then you'd be surprised how small a file can be, yet still give excellent photographic results. Of course, there are always some exceptions, an illustration can be very very small and print perfectly adequately, really fine detail may require a larger file size. That said, modern cameras provide files which are far larger than required for 99% of all output, you don't need a 12 or more megapixel camera to print A3, A2 or A1.

[baz7175]

With 1.5Tb HDD's available for around the 60squid marker there's no reason not to keep everything BIG...my main photo PC currently runs 8Tb of HDD's and that's not counting the mellee of external drives I have!!!

[cottonfoo]

baz7175 said:

With 1.5Tb HDD's available for around the 60squid marker there's no reason not to keep everything BIG...my main photo PC currently runs 8Tb of HDD's and that's not counting the mellee of external drives I have!!!

That's fine as long as you have a proper backup, and by proper backup I don't mean external hard drives or some cheap and nasty RAID NAS.

[flat-planedCrank]

M-J-B said:

GetCarter said:

Well if you are not sure what you might need them for, then save uncompressed.

If you are totally and utterly sure you'll never ever, ever want to print them to any size, then save them as JPGs

However, given the cheapness of digital storage.... etc.

Sorry to disagree, but I own a large format printing company and we suggest saving files as jpegs rather than tiffs. To do so has no detrimental effect on the printing of an image, providing the image was large enough to start with. As a rule of thumb, we advise a minimum of 100dpi at full size, and you will achieve photographic results when printed.

With file sizes as they are, unless you are looking at huge prints (say 3m x 11m) then you'd be surprised how small a file can be, yet still give excellent photographic results. Of course, there are always some exceptions, an illustration can be very very small and print perfectly adequately, really fine detail may require a larger file size. That said, modern cameras provide files which are far larger than required for 99% of all output, you don't need a 12 or more megapixel camera to print A3, A2 or A1.

I would agree that printing JPG images will most often not result in any detrimental effect (as a side note, imo most of the discussion of 'soft' lenses would disappear if people printed their images rather than viewing at 100% on a monitor)

However, if you want to crop a section of the image and enlarge it then the small artefacts that JPG compression has introduced could become an issue.


If you are sending the image to print then I'd certainly convert to JPG, but if the only limiting factor on deciding to save as a lossless filetype is hard drive size then I would just buy a bigger hd

Personally, I think that if your only copy of a processed image is not the highest quality possible then data has been discarded at the 'wrong' time.


All imo of course




(This discussion is staying very cordial, perhaps we should start discussing RAW vs JPG )

[North West Tom]

For some reason it was only certain images. The one's I've processed tonight have all been around 1mb. Wonder what I did wrong?

[North West Tom]

It seems i've saved them as 6144 x 4085 Don't know how I did that!

[tim-b]

flat-planedCrank said:

M-J-B said:

GetCarter said:

Well if you are not sure what you might need them for, then save uncompressed.

If you are totally and utterly sure you'll never ever, ever want to print them to any size, then save them as JPGs

However, given the cheapness of digital storage.... etc.

Sorry to disagree, but I own a large format printing company and we suggest saving files as jpegs rather than tiffs. To do so has no detrimental effect on the printing of an image, providing the image was large enough to start with. As a rule of thumb, we advise a minimum of 100dpi at full size, and you will achieve photographic results when printed.

With file sizes as they are, unless you are looking at huge prints (say 3m x 11m) then you'd be surprised how small a file can be, yet still give excellent photographic results. Of course, there are always some exceptions, an illustration can be very very small and print perfectly adequately, really fine detail may require a larger file size. That said, modern cameras provide files which are far larger than required for 99% of all output, you don't need a 12 or more megapixel camera to print A3, A2 or A1.

I would agree that printing JPG images will most often not result in any detrimental effect (as a side note, imo most of the discussion of 'soft' lenses would disappear if people printed their images rather than viewing at 100% on a monitor)

However, if you want to crop a section of the image and enlarge it then the small artefacts that JPG compression has introduced could become an issue.


If you are sending the image to print then I'd certainly convert to JPG, but if the only limiting factor on deciding to save as a lossless filetype is hard drive size then I would just buy a bigger hd

Personally, I think that if your only copy of a processed image is not the highest quality possible then data has been discarded at the 'wrong' time.


All imo of course




(This discussion is staying very cordial, perhaps we should start discussing RAW vs JPG )

Have to say I agree with M-J-B; you'd be hard-pushed to spot the difference between a high quality jpg and a tif, provided the jpg started out in good condition (i.e. came from camera as RAW, not jpg). I just opened a RAW file (14.5 MB) to check this, and overlayed a jpg copy saved at the highest quality (8MB); flicking the layer on and off showed no difference whatsoever even when zoomed right in. Uncompressed tif also looked identical, but came out at 36.4MB. What really surprised me though, was the massive visual difference between the RAW/tif/jpg-from-RAW files and the jpg straight from the camera....I'll be shooting only RAW from now on!

As for HDD space, you'll always fill up whatever you have but I'd rather keep files small as you can fit more on a DVD for a hard copy backup, and it's quicker to upload to flickr etc.

For those interested, the stats for the test pic ;

RAW: 14.5MB
Jpg saved from RAW: 8.01MB
Tif saved from RAW: 36.5MB
-indistinguishable from each other

Jpg from camera: 4.7MB
-noticeably softer/less defined

[flat-planedCrank]

tim-b said:

flat-planedCrank said:

M-J-B said:

GetCarter said:

Well if you are not sure what you might need them for, then save uncompressed.

If you are totally and utterly sure you'll never ever, ever want to print them to any size, then save them as JPGs

However, given the cheapness of digital storage.... etc.

Sorry to disagree, but I own a large format printing company and we suggest saving files as jpegs rather than tiffs. To do so has no detrimental effect on the printing of an image, providing the image was large enough to start with. As a rule of thumb, we advise a minimum of 100dpi at full size, and you will achieve photographic results when printed.

With file sizes as they are, unless you are looking at huge prints (say 3m x 11m) then you'd be surprised how small a file can be, yet still give excellent photographic results. Of course, there are always some exceptions, an illustration can be very very small and print perfectly adequately, really fine detail may require a larger file size. That said, modern cameras provide files which are far larger than required for 99% of all output, you don't need a 12 or more megapixel camera to print A3, A2 or A1.

I would agree that printing JPG images will most often not result in any detrimental effect (as a side note, imo most of the discussion of 'soft' lenses would disappear if people printed their images rather than viewing at 100% on a monitor)

However, if you want to crop a section of the image and enlarge it then the small artefacts that JPG compression has introduced could become an issue.


If you are sending the image to print then I'd certainly convert to JPG, but if the only limiting factor on deciding to save as a lossless filetype is hard drive size then I would just buy a bigger hd

Personally, I think that if your only copy of a processed image is not the highest quality possible then data has been discarded at the 'wrong' time.


All imo of course




(This discussion is staying very cordial, perhaps we should start discussing RAW vs JPG )

Have to say I agree with M-J-B; you'd be hard-pushed to spot the difference between a high quality jpg and a tif, provided the jpg started out in good condition (i.e. came from camera as RAW, not jpg). I just opened a RAW file (14.5 MB) to check this, and overlayed a jpg copy saved at the highest quality (8MB); flicking the layer on and off showed no difference whatsoever even when zoomed right in. Uncompressed tif also looked identical, but came out at 36.4MB. What really surprised me though, was the massive visual difference between the RAW/tif/jpg-from-RAW files and the jpg straight from the camera....I'll be shooting only RAW from now on!

As for HDD space, you'll always fill up whatever you have but I'd rather keep files small as you can fit more on a DVD for a hard copy backup, and it's quicker to upload to flickr etc.

For those interested, the stats for the test pic ;

RAW: 14.5MB
Jpg saved from RAW: 8.01MB
Tif saved from RAW: 36.5MB
-indistinguishable from each other

Jpg from camera: 4.7MB
-noticeably softer/less defined

I'd agree with the lack of immediate visual difference between a TIFF file and a high quality JPG.
However the differences are there, I've just run a quick test as well

Test image:


Compressed TIFF - 8.95MB
Highest Quality JPG - 3.4MB
(about 2.5 times smaller)

So not a huge difference in these days of 1TB drives for £40-50.

In photoshop, check the difference between the 2 images:

[This is a 100% crop - difference has been exaggerated to see the detail (ironically saved as a jpg )]



For me, the extra filesize is worth it

[/]

Edited by flat-planedCrank on Wednesday 20th October 21:52

[tim-b]

flat-planedCrank said:

tim-b said:

flat-planedCrank said:

M-J-B said:

GetCarter said:

Well if you are not sure what you might need them for, then save uncompressed.

If you are totally and utterly sure you'll never ever, ever want to print them to any size, then save them as JPGs

However, given the cheapness of digital storage.... etc.

Sorry to disagree, but I own a large format printing company and we suggest saving files as jpegs rather than tiffs. To do so has no detrimental effect on the printing of an image, providing the image was large enough to start with. As a rule of thumb, we advise a minimum of 100dpi at full size, and you will achieve photographic results when printed.

With file sizes as they are, unless you are looking at huge prints (say 3m x 11m) then you'd be surprised how small a file can be, yet still give excellent photographic results. Of course, there are always some exceptions, an illustration can be very very small and print perfectly adequately, really fine detail may require a larger file size. That said, modern cameras provide files which are far larger than required for 99% of all output, you don't need a 12 or more megapixel camera to print A3, A2 or A1.

I would agree that printing JPG images will most often not result in any detrimental effect (as a side note, imo most of the discussion of 'soft' lenses would disappear if people printed their images rather than viewing at 100% on a monitor)

However, if you want to crop a section of the image and enlarge it then the small artefacts that JPG compression has introduced could become an issue.


If you are sending the image to print then I'd certainly convert to JPG, but if the only limiting factor on deciding to save as a lossless filetype is hard drive size then I would just buy a bigger hd

Personally, I think that if your only copy of a processed image is not the highest quality possible then data has been discarded at the 'wrong' time.


All imo of course




(This discussion is staying very cordial, perhaps we should start discussing RAW vs JPG )

Have to say I agree with M-J-B; you'd be hard-pushed to spot the difference between a high quality jpg and a tif, provided the jpg started out in good condition (i.e. came from camera as RAW, not jpg). I just opened a RAW file (14.5 MB) to check this, and overlayed a jpg copy saved at the highest quality (8MB); flicking the layer on and off showed no difference whatsoever even when zoomed right in. Uncompressed tif also looked identical, but came out at 36.4MB. What really surprised me though, was the massive visual difference between the RAW/tif/jpg-from-RAW files and the jpg straight from the camera....I'll be shooting only RAW from now on!

As for HDD space, you'll always fill up whatever you have but I'd rather keep files small as you can fit more on a DVD for a hard copy backup, and it's quicker to upload to flickr etc.

For those interested, the stats for the test pic ;

RAW: 14.5MB
Jpg saved from RAW: 8.01MB
Tif saved from RAW: 36.5MB
-indistinguishable from each other

Jpg from camera: 4.7MB
-noticeably softer/less defined

I'd agree with the lack of immediate visual difference between a TIFF file and a high quality JPG.
However the differences are there, I've just run a quick test as well

Test image:


Compressed TIFF - 8.95MB
Highest Quality JPG - 3.4MB
(about 2.5 times smaller)

So not a huge difference in these days of 1TB drives for £40-50.

In photoshop, check the difference between the 2 images:

[This is a 100% crop - difference has been exaggerated to see the detail]


For me, the extra filesize is worth the trade-off

Either we have very different methods of saving jpgs or your difference image has been *massively* manipulated - I did this with my test image and unless you drag the input for the 'curve' to the very extreme (i.e. input<25 output 255), you just get black (i.e. no visible difference). Which only proves that you need to enhance an image way beyond reality, to a degree you would never ever see it in, to measure any change. I guarantee that if your two images were mixed up and placed side by side, there is no way you or anyone else could tell which was which, at any zoom level! So what's the point in saying one format looks better than the other when you can't tell them apart? TBH I think my photography would have to improve a great deal before such microscopic quality losses begin to concern me!