Posted by Carol Nichols on August 22, 2009 at 9:57 PM
I recently posted an image to M&N with a lot of detail. I had to reduce the quality to 45% in order to get the image below 200kb, but then the photo did not come out very well. Bill Fach said that I should be using Save for Web and I'm not sure how to do this. I normally use the export feature in LR2.4, set the image size, and adjust the quality until I get below 200kb. That's it. I searched this forum for posting help, but most of it is pretty old and doesn't mention LR. Is there a way to Save for Web in LR or do I need to go into PS, which I realize has a Save for Web feature, but I can't really figure that out either. Help
You sometimes need to do unsharp mask (sharpen the shot a little) after you have resized it.
Posted by Jack Garrett on August 23, 2009 at 12:45 AM
I usually do it in photoshop. After I do all my processing, I resize the image to 700 pixels on the long side...keep constrained settings. That should reduce the image size to somewhere less than 1 MB. Then do save for web..usually I can get to about 80% and have a 200kb image that looks pretty good. Hope that helps.
Can you post a link to the image in question? That will help us to see what might be going on.
Usually, web display issues revolve around three areas: color profile, jpg compression of detailed images, and sharpness.
Be sure to convert the image profile to sRGB, if it is in some other color space and then sharpen it before opening Save for Web.
In PS, with your image open, go to File> Save for Web...This should open the application (which is actually part of Image Ready). You'll be able to set the file size by using the quality slider on the right side of the workspace. Also, check "Optimize". This removes any metadata that is useless on the web and increases file size.
Keep in mind that jpg files lose quality with each successive 'save', so try to ensure everything with your image is correct before saving for the web.
-P
Posted by Carol Nichols on August 23, 2009 at 8:23 AM
This is the photo I am referring to. It has been saved in sRGB. It really has beautiful detail in the original file and I hate seeing it look like this
The color looks very nice. I think using Save for Web in PS will help in the future. Also, I agree with the other posters in that thread that some careful sharpening (also in PS) will help in images with similar levels of detail.
It's a nice image; carefully composed, and the azaleas are gorgeous. Nice work!
-P
Posted by Richard Ditch on August 23, 2009 at 12:39 PM
I don't mean to highjack your thread, Carol, but I want to address a few of the related points made so far.
1. Sharpening should come after the image has been resized for posting (720px or 1200px here at NPN). I do all image correction work on the full size image via layers, then flatten, convert to 8 bit, crop, and resize. After sharpening I add my copyright as another layer and flatten that. Then I save a jpeg for uploading.
2. I do not use Save for Web as I want my images to retain EXIF data, which SfW discards to make the file as small as possible. SfW also strips out any color profile in the image. Retaining the color profile will ensure that color aware applications (like Safari and FireFox on Macs) display the image as it is supposed to look.
3. I disagree with Preston that "s useless on the web." I want my images to retain my name and copyright and url. And I find value in being able to check the EXIF on other people's posts at times to clarify shooting parameters.
Although my workflow is a little different, I certainly agree with sharpening after resizing.
In terms of percent of the browser market that use color managed browsers, the percentage is very small compared to non-color managed. So, converting the image to sRGB, whether using SfW or not, will ensure an image is going to look pretty good on the majority of browsers (accounting for monitor differences, of course).
Perhaps 'useless' was a poor choice of words on my part. I agree that EXIF data has a place. However, in the present context, Carol's image has a problem with compression, so eliminating metadata would have helped her make a better quality image for the web.
Thanks for your comments.
-P
Posted by Richard Ditch on August 24, 2009 at 12:58 PM
I agree with Preston about converting an image to sRGB color space before posting; in fact I work in sRGB all along so I don't need to convert in my work flow and so didn't mention it.
But including a color profile in an sRGB image has value because it also covers differences in gamma settings. Many Mac users (including me) stay with the default Mac gamma on our computers so often we see images from PC users looking a bit too bright. This doesn't happen if the PC prepared image contains an embedded color profile.
Posted by Jim DeWitt on August 24, 2009 at 2:15 PM
Carol -
I don't want to confuse you further in an already confusing area, but there is a second option. If the level of detail in your photo makes it impossible to post under NPN's 200KB limit, you can post to another site instead and put the link to that site in the dialog box. I've used this for high-detail images that JPEG algorithms don't handle very gracefully.
In my case, I have a directory on my web site where I put the photos. I place them there and put the full path (the "http://www.iciclesoftware.com/... stuff" in the appropriate field that appears after you click NPN's choose file button. As always, there are trade-offs: using this technique, you can post an file size you want. But it can't be too big or your viewers will lose patience with the loading process and surf elsewhere. Compare the load speeds from NPN for the 200KB/720px image and the 500kb/1200px image and you'll get an idea of the problem.
Carol, your ISP may have free space for a web site under their domain name. For example: www.your-isp/your-site.com. You might want to contact your ISP and see. There are usually limits at to the total size of all files you can upload, so you'll have to be careful. Mine does, but I have my own domain name and use that for my site.
I upload all my NPN images to my server and then input the link into the "Post a Photo" dialog box. I still try to keep the file size at around 250KB, sometimes a bit more for highly detailed images, so that download time, especially for lower speed connections isn't too great.
Discussion
10 repliesCan you post a link to the image in question? That will help us to see what might be going on.
Usually, web display issues revolve around three areas: color profile, jpg compression of detailed images, and sharpness.
Be sure to convert the image profile to sRGB, if it is in some other color space and then sharpen it before opening Save for Web.
In PS, with your image open, go to File> Save for Web...This should open the application (which is actually part of Image Ready). You'll be able to set the file size by using the quality slider on the right side of the workspace. Also, check "Optimize". This removes any metadata that is useless on the web and increases file size.
Keep in mind that jpg files lose quality with each successive 'save', so try to ensure everything with your image is correct before saving for the web.
-P
This is the photo I am referring to. It has been saved in sRGB. It really has beautiful detail in the original file and I hate seeing it look like this
The color looks very nice. I think using Save for Web in PS will help in the future. Also, I agree with the other posters in that thread that some careful sharpening (also in PS) will help in images with similar levels of detail.
It's a nice image; carefully composed, and the azaleas are gorgeous. Nice work!
-P
1. Sharpening should come after the image has been resized for posting (720px or 1200px here at NPN). I do all image correction work on the full size image via layers, then flatten, convert to 8 bit, crop, and resize. After sharpening I add my copyright as another layer and flatten that. Then I save a jpeg for uploading.
2. I do not use Save for Web as I want my images to retain EXIF data, which SfW discards to make the file as small as possible. SfW also strips out any color profile in the image. Retaining the color profile will ensure that color aware applications (like Safari and FireFox on Macs) display the image as it is supposed to look.
3. I disagree with Preston that "s useless on the web." I want my images to retain my name and copyright and url. And I find value in being able to check the EXIF on other people's posts at times to clarify shooting parameters.
Although my workflow is a little different, I certainly agree with sharpening after resizing.
In terms of percent of the browser market that use color managed browsers, the percentage is very small compared to non-color managed. So, converting the image to sRGB, whether using SfW or not, will ensure an image is going to look pretty good on the majority of browsers (accounting for monitor differences, of course).
Perhaps 'useless' was a poor choice of words on my part. I agree that EXIF data has a place. However, in the present context, Carol's image has a problem with compression, so eliminating metadata would have helped her make a better quality image for the web.
Thanks for your comments.
-P
But including a color profile in an sRGB image has value because it also covers differences in gamma settings. Many Mac users (including me) stay with the default Mac gamma on our computers so often we see images from PC users looking a bit too bright. This doesn't happen if the PC prepared image contains an embedded color profile.
I don't want to confuse you further in an already confusing area, but there is a second option. If the level of detail in your photo makes it impossible to post under NPN's 200KB limit, you can post to another site instead and put the link to that site in the dialog box. I've used this for high-detail images that JPEG algorithms don't handle very gracefully.
In my case, I have a directory on my web site where I put the photos. I place them there and put the full path (the "http://www.iciclesoftware.com/... stuff" in the appropriate field that appears after you click NPN's choose file button. As always, there are trade-offs: using this technique, you can post an file size you want. But it can't be too big or your viewers will lose patience with the loading process and surf elsewhere. Compare the load speeds from NPN for the 200KB/720px image and the 500kb/1200px image and you'll get an idea of the problem.
Carol, your ISP may have free space for a web site under their domain name. For example: www.your-isp/your-site.com. You might want to contact your ISP and see. There are usually limits at to the total size of all files you can upload, so you'll have to be careful. Mine does, but I have my own domain name and use that for my site.
I upload all my NPN images to my server and then input the link into the "Post a Photo" dialog box. I still try to keep the file size at around 250KB, sometimes a bit more for highly detailed images, so that download time, especially for lower speed connections isn't too great.
-P