Resizing photo for Photo Forum

[kimberley]

What are the best setting for resizing a photo to put on the photo forum??

[JamesB]

i take mine down to largest side of 800 (sometimes smaller). THen I try to keep the file size down to under 150K, but usually closer to 100K.

I think the max pixel size on any one side is 900, not sure about file size

James

[OversighT]

James has the general guidelines correct. To add to his post make sure your photo is set to 72dpi as it will make the file size smaller and monitors can't display anything higher than 72dpi.

T.

[h00kemh0rns]

800 x 600 is the general rule. Wasn't aware of the dpi...good to know.

[Roadrnr]

Thanks for the info, that's good to know on the dpi. My question is how do you keep the Exif info if you use the "save for web" function in ps? I would like to retain that info when I resize it

[jeffkohn]

The DPI number is meaningless; it has nothing to do with displaying images on the web. The only thing it might be used for is programs that use the DPI/resolution to determine image dimensions for printing (but most decent printing programs won't limit you this way).

My question is how do you keep the Exif info if you use the "save for web" function in ps? I would like to retain that info when I resize it

You can't. Best solution is to not use "Save For the Web" at all since it really doesn't do much for you anyway (it's not even smart enough to convert images to sRGB which is what you need for proper web display).

Here's the list of steps I take for generating a web JPG from an image:

1) Resize to 800 wide (horizontal) or 700 tall (vertical) using Bicubic Smoother.
2) Flatten Image
3) Apply some USM (90%, .3 radius, threshold = 1)
4) Convert to sRGB profile
5) Convert to 8-bit mode
6) Save as qualty 10 JPG.

It may sound like a lot of work but I have an action (actually one each for horizontal and vertical) so that I can batch a whole bunch of images at once with no user intervention.

[srwatters]

Originally Posted by jeffkohn

Here's the list of steps I take for generating a web JPG from an image:

1) Resize to 800 wide (horizontal) or 700 tall (vertical) using Bicubic Smoother.
2) Flatten Image
3) Apply some USM (90%, .3 radius, threshold = 1)
4) Convert to sRGB profile
5) Convert to 8-bit mode
6) Save as qualty 10 JPG.

It may sound like a lot of work but I have an action (actually one each for horizontal and vertical) so that I can batch a whole bunch of images at once with no user intervention.

I'm with Jeff here except I've now quit doing the USM and I use Bicubic-Sharper on the image resize and I have the order slightly different in my action:

1 - Flatten
2 - 8 bit
3 - sRGB
4 - resize 600 tall using Bicubic sharper (most of my images are Portrait, gives me 600x400)
5 - save as jpg quality 8 (keeps most files around 100K)

I also use the same action to do my little border and signature between steps 4 & 5.

Jeff, isn't bicubic smoother really only for use when you upsample? I know I read that somewhere, but I can't remember where. I've found that the Bicubic-sharper is just about right and maintains the same level of sharpness as my original 6MP tifs. YMMV.

[jeffkohn]

Originally Posted by srwatters

I'm with Jeff here except I've now quit doing the USM and I use Bicubic-Sharper on the image resize and I have the order slightly different in my action:

1 - Flatten
2 - 8 bit
3 - sRGB
4 - resize 600 tall using Bicubic sharper (most of my images are Portrait, gives me 600x400)
5 - save as jpg quality 8 (keeps most files around 100K)

I also use the same action to do my little border and signature between steps 4 & 5.

Jeff, isn't bicubic smoother really only for use when you upsample? I know I read that somewhere, but I can't remember where. I've found that the Bicubic-sharper is just about right and maintains the same level of sharpness as my original 6MP tifs. YMMV.

In theory Bicubic-smoother is for upsizing and Bicubic-sharper is for downsizing, but some think that Bicubic-smoother is the best all-around. Using it does require a bit of USM for best results though. My experience with Bicubic-sharper was that it was slightly more prone to introducing aliasing artifacts (jaggies), and I also didn't like what it did to the really fine detail in some shots. It really just depends on your workflow preferences and the types of images you're working with, though. For instance with portraits you're probably a lot less likely to see the issues with Bicubic-sharper that made me go with smoother.

BTW from a purist's standpoint if you want to preserve the most color accuracy possible you should convert to sRGB before going to 8-bit. Probably it won't make a huge or even noticeable difference in most cases but will give you the most accurate conversion possible.

[srwatters]

Excellent explanation, as usual, Jeff. I used to do the 'standard' bicubic resample, then used USM at about 80%, 0.8, 2 with good results. I just figured that a single step might provide less degradation of the image data.

I'll switch around my 8bit and sRGB steps in the action. I wouldn't want to be known as a sloppy non-purist, now, would I?

[LowSpark]

hmmmmmmmmmmm
I'll have to give a couple of the above suggestions a try to see if there is a difference in how the image appears on the web

I have kept mine alot simpler and it seems to work fine for me
I shoot in fine jpeg format
1> crop if need be
2> image/adjust/levels (sometimes I will use auto levels just to see what the computer thinks is correct)
3> unsharp mask (100%/ 1.0 radius/ 0 threshold)
4> image/ image size
5> file/ save as (.jpg)/ quality 5/medium

will I see a noticeable difference in my photos online by using the above suggestions?

[jeffkohn]

5> file/ save as (.jpg)/ quality 5/medium

For some images this will be fine, but for others you're may see JPEG compression artifacts. Assuming your image is reasonably size for web display, even a quality of 9 or 10 will give you files well under 150k in most cases, which should be perfectly manageable on anything but a dialup connection.