Image Management for the Web

[Allen Mead]

Apologies if this has been posted before, I have looked but couldn't fid exactly what I was looking for.

My camera takes pics that are 3504 x 2336 at full res. which is far too big to start uploading and people to view especially if you are on a dial up service and can be just as much of a pain on bradband.

I had a little play with re-sizing an image in Paint sho Pro 9 last night and to be perfectly frank, it's crap. However, I do have access to Adobe Photoshop CS.

I've had another play with an image in photoshop and it's excellent at re-sizing without distorting, but, image foot print os still quite large. what else can I do to make images load quicker without loosing quality?

Thanks in advance.

[neil_davidson2]

Allen, try going into image->size in Photoshop and altering the size by the number of pixels rather than the measurement units. Experiment with whichever size looks best when viewed through IE (or whichever browser you're using), but start with a width of 400pixels for example, drop the resolution to 72 and save as jpg level 6-8. (Make sure you save this in a new file or folder - always keep your originals!)

This should leave you with a decent sized file but you will need to tweak the settings to ensure that you keep the picture quality that you want.

Alternatively experiment with the file->automate->webphotogallery as this produces a gallery complete with thumbnails. But make sure you specify an empty folder for the web name as it will overwrite anything already there without asking for confirmation.

[Neil Adams]

you can set up photoshop actions to resize an entire folder of pictures with the click of a button

[Allen Mead]

Thanks guys, I'll have a fiddle with the settings later tonight. Neil Adams, how do I set Photoshop up to do that?

[Neil Adams]

its pretty simple, firstly get the actions palette to appear, by going to window > actions, then click the button to create a new action, hit the record button and resize your image to the required size, via image size, and then save for web at your chosen jpeg quality into a new folder / location of your choice, then close the file (click no when asked to save changes) and click stop to stop recording the action.

Now go to file > automate and select the action you just recorded in the drop down menus, and select the source folder of your original images.

click ok and it'll start opening each image apply the action, save it into the folder you specifyed, close the original and open the next one etc..

i recommend you experiment / trial first to make sure its doing what you want,
as mentioned above you want to resize the image via the pixels measurements, if you go view > actual pixels this will show you the size the image will appear on the web.
i recommend 100k or less per picture to avoid long waits for the picture to appear

all you then have to do for the next batch of pictures is the file > automate stage

[Allen Mead]

Fantastic! thanks for your help. I'll give it a go.

[Scott Taylor]

Macromedia Fireworks is a brilliant program, and yes you would resize by pixels rather than size as it will keep quality etc, but again my recomended program is MM Fireworks.

[David L]

Photoshop would be the default choice.. There is a "save for web" function you could play with..