Optimizing your Images and Saving for the Web
by Michael
I wrote this for a new member who was having trouble keeping their file size under the 250 kb limit. Michael
This is a collaboration of many people.
Tweaking
First in FE go to Preferences/spots and images and uncheck the Antialising
is off by default box or FE will reduce the size of your image in half. For your final image say 600 x 600 make it anywhere from 800 x 800 to
1200 x 1200 use the antialising if you have any jaggies. There's allot of info
on this on the FE site. Save your image as a bitmap. Now open your image
in you editing program. This is written for PhotoShop and Corel PP, but it
should apply to most programs.
Reduce the image to 600 x 600. Reducing the image from 1200 x1200 to
600 x 600 is a another way to anti-alias the image. By reducing the file size
you force the program to sample pixels and average them. FE's version of
this is too strong for most images. That's why it's nice to have that outside
graphics editor with better aa algorithms.
The most common monitor size is 600 x 800. So if you make it any bigger
people will have to scroll or reduce it to view it. Now use the Unsharp filter
Choose Filter / Sharpen / Unsharp Mask ( which sharpens). In Corel
Effects/Sharpen/ unsharp. The settings I use are Radius 15 threshold
between 2 -20 and play with the amount. I usually keep it at around 114.
Now use the filters of your choice to tweak the colors Contrast / Levels /
Saturation. etc. The point of saving is to get your image to the smallest
file size. On average you should be able to get a 600 x 600 image to 60 kb to
125 kb. Remember if you post 5 images at 200 kb that is 1 megabyte. Which is a 10 minute download for someone with a 56 k modem. Also many
people have size limits on their mailboxes and with an active group we
should be considerate.
Saving in Corel
I've usually get the smallest file size with jpegs. This is the definition
from Adobe If your image is one that has a limited number of colors
and clear demarcations between the colors, like a 2-color graphic
with limited gradations or text, GIF is usually better. It is not "lossy"
as is JPEG because it doesn't compress the same way that jpeg does.
You will want to save in JPEG Format if your image is one that has lots
of gradations in color, or as /you will have in most photos. Go to
file/save as and choose jpeg. Click save and you will go to the options
and try between 15 / 30 compression and see which looks best in the
preview. The higher the compression the lower the file size. Be sure
the smoothing is set to zero and subformat to 4.4.4. If the file size is
still too large you can always reduce the image by another 50 to 100 pixels.
Saving PhotoShop
If you don't have the Save for web feature select save as JPEG and
in the jpeg options try either the medium or high setting. If you have
one thats monochrome or large area of flat color and want to save as a
GIf, try starting at 8 colors and working your way up 16, 32 etc. til you
like the quality.
Saving PSP7
To save a new Paint Shop Pro image, do one of the following to open the Save dialog box:
Choose File / Save,
Press Ctrl + S, or
press the Save button on the toolbar.
After the first time you save the image, you can save any
changes using one of the following methods. PSP has three
Save commands you can use:
Use the Save command to save a new image or changes to an image.
The first time you save an image, the Save As dialog box opens. After it has saved the image, choosing File / Save or clicking
the Save toolbar button saves the changes without opening a
dialog box.
Use the Save As command to save an image to a different file
format or name. The Save As dialog box opens to the previously
used folder. To have it display the last used file format, set
the option in the General Program Preferences dialog box. To
open the Save As dialog box, choose File / Save As or click
the Save As toolbar button.
Save Copy As dialog box, Use the Save In drop-down box
to Navigate to a new folder if you want to save the copy in a
different folder. In the File Name box, type a name for the file. To
save the file in a different format, select the format from the
Save As Type drop-down list.Click Save to close the dialog box
and save a copy of the file.
Image Size before sending it to the mailing list:
Using the PSP Browser, thumbnails of all images in any given
folder can be opened by the program they appear in the Browser’s
right pane. To view file information, move the cursor over a
thumbnail. It displays a ToolTip with the file’s name and size,
the image dimensions and color depth, and the date the file was
last modified. To save size save the image at normal size in
PSP with extension .psp then save it as a .jpg extension. Then
I check it with the browser preview and if it is still to large
I will resize it to about 75% of orginal.
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