Posted by Greg Maklae on November 20, 2008 at 7:03 AM
What is the best way to reduce an image from 3+ meg to 200k? Mine seem to lose crispness. Currently I am using PhotoShop Elements 5. My first step is to adjust image size to 720 pixels, then save with a compression of 5 or 6 to get it to 200k. Is there a better procedure?
Thanks - Greg
Posted by John Mumaw on November 20, 2008 at 7:37 AM
Your downsizing technique looks sound to me.
Almost every image significantly downsized needs to be resharpened.
Lots of folks like to use Marc Adamus' sharpening technique.
Try it and see what you think.
Posted by Rick Dunn on November 20, 2008 at 4:12 PM
Is your 3+ meg file sharpened? If so, you'll definitely see a difference after downsizing, but you want to leave your original file unsharpened. First downsize, then sharpen. If you follow Marc's process that John mentioned, you'll downsize partially, oversharpen, then downsize again. But with either approach, sharpening should be applied only at the end.
If you have any trouble, post a pic and we can take look. Good luck.
Posted by Buck Ward on November 22, 2008 at 2:48 PM
In CS3, I downsize, then sharpen, then save as JPEG at 10. It almost always give me a file smaller than 200kb, often less than 100kb. If the file size is too large, I reduce the JPEG compression to 9 or maybe even 8.
Photos with more detail (as opposed to than photos with less detail) or with more sharpening or that were sharpened prior to downsizing will be larger after JPEG compression. I used to use multiple applications of light unsharp mask after downsizing with an earlier version of PhotoShop, but with CS3 I find that Smart Sharpen works well for downsized pictures. I seldom have a problem trying to get a small file size and a picture that still looks good.
I hope the same technique would work in Elements 5
Discussion
3 repliesThanks - Greg
Almost every image significantly downsized needs to be resharpened.
Lots of folks like to use Marc Adamus' sharpening technique.
Try it and see what you think.
If you have any trouble, post a pic and we can take look. Good luck.
Photos with more detail (as opposed to than photos with less detail) or with more sharpening or that were sharpened prior to downsizing will be larger after JPEG compression. I used to use multiple applications of light unsharp mask after downsizing with an earlier version of PhotoShop, but with CS3 I find that Smart Sharpen works well for downsized pictures. I seldom have a problem trying to get a small file size and a picture that still looks good.
I hope the same technique would work in Elements 5