Help photos I'm still having a blonde moment

Papa Lima has it right (as befits a Tech Author of course :rolleyes: ). The DPI has no bearing on images reproduced on screen, just as Damien is always telling us. However, the encoding used has. Most software saves jpg images using Standard Encoding set at around a Compression Level value of 5. To produce images that are less sizeable (in terms of kilobytes) select Progressive Encoding and set the Compression Level value to, say, 15.

You’ll find that even large images – around 3,000kb – can be reduced to around 100kb without loss of image quality on-screen. Experimenting with the save options for jpg images can produce good forum-friendly results.

By the way, the above gen relates to PaintShop Pro but I’m sure other packages will allow such adjustments. 🙂

A while back on this board someone (sorry cannot remember who) suggested downloading Microsoft ‘Powertoys’ from their website. I did so and once you have it installed picture posting problems are solved as you are then able to right click on your picture file and select ‘resize image’ from the normal menu. You then pick small, medium or large (the first two are below the posting size threshold). Hey presto – a second copy of your picture is created with a (small) suffix which you can slect for posting in the normal way. It does not seem to have much of an effect on image quality either

Use IrfanView. Good for fast ops and it’s free. http://www.irfanview.com/

To be precise, setting the dpi in Photoshop 7 (and maybe version 6 too) is via:
Image/Image size/ Document size/Resolution, with Constrain Proportions ticked and Resample Image set to Bicubic . . .

By the way, if you’re wondering what the difference between them is – load each image in turn into your favourite image editing software, select page setup, set the scaling to 100%, and see how large each of them comes out.

DPI is irrelevant in relation to images solely for use on computers – it is only relevant when you get to the issue of printing the image out.

The first of these images is saved at 72DPI, the second at 300. Spot the difference.

Don’t forget that the first thing to do is to reduce the image quality to no higher than 72dpi. This is the effective maximum resolution of PC monitors, so using the 300 dpi needed for publication gains absolutely nothing in terms of perceived quality for the viewer.

Moggy

Another way after setting the image width to 700 or so, is to “Save as” a .jpg file and then when it asks you for the “Image Options/Quality” choose around 8. I then look at the size of the file in the directory I saved it to, and see that it is lower than 100k. If it’s too big, go back, save as again (with the same name) and this time try 6 or 7 instead of 8 for the “Image Options/Quality”. When you’ve done it a few times with different pictures, you get a “feel” for the image size and .jpg quality numbers.
However, I didn’t know about the “Save to Web” method and will try that to see if it’s better.

I have version 6.0. I usually resize the picture to 800×600, then from the ‘file’ menu, select ‘save for web’. This brings up several preview panes, each of differing quality, with the size the picture would be indicated. Just select the one closest to what you want, then fine tune by changing the ‘quality’ value at top right.
You can drag the picture around inside each frame with the hand tool to see what effect the quality has.
Once your happy OK it and you will get a file save dialogue box.
Hope this helps.

I too have the same problem, I have Photoshop 6 and I do not seem to be able to resize to meet the 100 kb file size, any help would be appreciated.