Digital Photo Compression

[Nostromo]

What is the ideal size for a JPEG photo to be attached to a forum post? Most of mine are in the 1Mb category and so should they be compressed further? I am struggling at the moment, since the selected file fails to upload.

[wilfy]

a 640x480 size is approx 60k. Or use high compression in jpeg for even more space saving.

[phaedra]

If you've got a copy of Photoshop or something similar resize the image to 640 or 800 pixels width at 600dpi, this should give you an image size of about 100Kb which is good enough for web use.

Here's a sample, original 2.23Mb, resized to 600 pixels at 600dpi = 91Kb

[Nostromo]

Thanks Jeff. I used a Minolta Dimage A1 camera (5MP) at a 'fine' setting for the Orlando trip, which gave a JPEG image of around 2.5Mb to start with. I used Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 to edit some images ( colour or contrast adjustment) which then reduced them to about 900Kb after saving. Are you saying that these should be compressed even further? How do I do it without too much loss of image quality (a problem with JPEG)?

[phaedra]

I've also got a Minolta 5Mp but usually shoot in RAW mode. Any jpg photo will have some level of compression, the FINE mode on the Minolta is not too bad though I certainly wouldn't want to compress them any further than that for normal viewing/printing.

If you're wanting to post them for viewing on a web page then the settings I gave above are about right. Using Photoshop elements, open an image, click on IMAGE, RESIZE, IMAGE SIZE you should then get the image info box up which shows its properties, for a FINE image it should be 2560 x 1920 pixels at 72dpi(pixels/inch)

Change the dpi(pixels/inch) to 600

You'll notice the file size will increase as well, change the width to 600 and then save a copy of the image as a .jpg with a quality setting of 8, this gives an image size of about 100Kb which looks OK on a web page the same settings were used for the example of our new kitten above.

[Nostromo]

Thank you Jeff, will do.

[wrpac00]

You can use a program called 'Ifranview' which I believe is a freeware program, it is very good.

[Nostromo]

It worked! I used Jeff's instructions to download my niece's photo onto the appropriate post under the "Renting a Florida Villa" section. Thanks Jeff.