Reducing file size

[KristyC]

Hi there,

Apologies for the simplicity of this question - but this is driving me insane.

I'm having difficulty reducing the file size of my photos - I use Aperture 2, but I'm not sure if I can reduce it in here. I also have photoshop, but don't know how do reduce the size in here either.

Hopefully once i've worked this out I'll be able to upload some nice photos!!!

Thanks for your time,

Kristy

[OsmosisStudios]

There several ways to reduce filesize. The first, and simplest, is simply to reduce resolution. If youre sending to the web, you dont need a 3600+ pixel image: generally, 900 on the long side is adequate.

The second is compression.

There are several forms of compression, and each has their plusses and minuses. If youre really gonna get into figuring this out, some serious research is in order. There are two types: lossless and lossy. In the former, there is no information lost, in the second, there is. Upsides: image quality vs small size, respectively. Downsides: size vs image quality, respectively.

Youve gotta find the right balance, in the right filetype, for the given application.

[jdepould]

When I'm exporting for web use, I generally resize to 800 pixels on the long side and 90% quality (Lightroom). If I'm using Photoshop I'll set the quality to 10 or 11. The files aren't tiny, but they're between 200-400k, which is small enough.

[RoyL]

In Photoshop go to File>Save for Web. Here you can optimize your image for the web. If you are using CS4 then make sure that you have the option "Convert to sRGB" selected, at the bottom of the page you can resize and for reductions use Bicubic Sharper (for CS3 or 4).

[KristyC]

Thanks so much everyone, that's definitely helped me out!!

In the interim, I discovered the post on loading photos from flickr which worked for me as well once I reduced the photos size there.

Thanks again

Kristy