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help on utilising disk space.

i keep getting the message "not enough diskspace to upload your image" and ive only 6 pages of pics in my gallery.

I’m looking for advice on the best way to keep my image files as small as possible without losing quality on my images.
I still haven’t managed to get to grips with the best way to go about this as my images take up a collossal amount of space.
what am I doing wrong?

I shoot in raw and process my image‘ with photoshop. then save as’ a tiff. then resize to 800 for either width or height, (I notice there are boxes underneath which are automatically altered when I enter “800” (is there something i can do here to save space?); then, I ‘save as’ jpeg (don’t use ‘save to web‘ option).

would be interested to know how others manage to keep their files small and would appreciate any advice.

thanks
pippa

Last edited by pippafox on May 5th, 2008 at 02:12 PM

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Pippa,

I shoot in raw also. I save all of those files as originals in a folder. As I work on them I save the working edits as tiff and save them in a folder called TIFF.

When I am ready to upload them I resize using the resolution of 72. It seems to work pretty good. When saving, it asks how large of a file you want. I keep it around 160-197 ish.

I save these files as jpeg and save them in a web only folder. remember to apply any sharpening after resizing. you will get better results when uploading.

Hope that helps.

Kevin

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"You don't take a photograph, you make it."
Ansel Adams

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Pippa,

I also shoot RAW and pretty much follow the same process as Kevin. I usually edit in photoshop so I typically use .psd format, save a master file in.psd, then flatten layers convert to 8 bit and save as a jpeg in a folder named "upload". From there I resize to 72 or 120 dpi and 800 pixels on the long side. 72 dpi is fine for web display. My final step before uploading is to sharpen, usually with "smart sharpen" in photoshop.

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Jim Pope
Visit my gallery at www.borrowedlight.net

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Pippa,

Byte's stated storage limit is 25.6 MB per user. If your average image file is 375 KB each, your six pages of images (68 files) add up to 25.5 MB. So you're always going to pushing the limit of how many images you can have in your gallery.

If you follow Kevin's procedure, you can fit more files in your 25.6 MB, but you will still fill it up eventually.

You might want to consider deleting some older or less interesting pics.

Bob

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Bob is right. I am at my limit now and have to delete an image in order to upload something new. There used to be a premium gallery with more space available but I am not sure if it still is.

Kevin

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"You don't take a photograph, you make it."
Ansel Adams

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gosh, great response, thanks indeed. byte is a good site. helpful


Kevin, very helpful info. just one thing though:

when saving to jpeg you said you keep it around 160-197 ish. is that the box at the bottom of the jpeg options? if that’s the case, I’ve given it a try and moved the slider to until number at the bottom is ~181.43K / 32.05s @ 56 Kbps. the slider shows its now a small file, but with an image quality of only 3. surely that will give a poor quality image when uploaded??

also at the bottom of the jpeg options page, 56 Kbps is selected on mine (default I think) but there is a drop down which begins at 14.4 Kbps and goes all the way to 2MBps. should I be choosing a different amount of Kbps?

still on the same jpeg options page middle section), is a choice: baseline; baseline (optimised) and progressive. mine is set by default to baseline (standard). should I be changing that?
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Jim interesting what you say about converting to 8 bit after editing. do you edit in 32 or 16 bit?
mine are converted to 8 bit straight after the raw process and I edit in 8 bit. do you think it makes a noticeable difference doing it your way. perhaps I should give it a try.
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Bob I do frequently delete images from my gallery. its just that I notice other people seem to get a lot more images out of their 25.6 mb than I do. my file sizes range between 344978 bytes and 613176 bytes compared with others that keep manage to keep theirs around 200000 bytes to 300000 bytes. i'm going to give Kevin’s method a try.


one other thing, i'm confused which boxes to check and uncheck in scales styles; constrain proportions and resample image - all in the 'image size' options at the bottom of the page. if i change one option others change at the same time and i think this makes a difference to document size. is document size different to file size?


thanks again - this has been very useful to me.

Last edited by pippafox on May 5th, 2008 at 11:21 PM

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Pippa,
My two cents - lately, I've switched to shooting RAW, converting to 16-bit TIFFs, and editing as .psd files. I resize, sharpen (each layer separately, if I have layer masks), convert to 8-bit, and then "save as" jpeg - usually around quality "10", which gives me a file size aroun 200kb. In other words, very similar to Jim.

Constrain proportions makes sure all your dimensions and such remain the same relative to each other as you resize and save. If you resize with it checked, then changing your height will cause a corresponding change in the width of your shot (and vice versa). If you don't have it checked, then the width would not change when you chance the height, and vice versa. Not as familiar with the different types of resampling and what their effects are.

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Steve - i can understand parts of what you are saying. but the bit about resizing and sharpening each separate layer is a bit advanced for my skill level.. all in good time.

the image i've just uploaded to the contest used a 10 quality and a 70 dpi but i must have done something wrong (i suspect with the check and uncheck boxes) because its still a massive 421289 bytes.
i did try following Kevins method but must have cocked it up somewhere along the line.

i do always make sure the 800 width or height correspondes proportionally to the shorter edge. but other than that i'm confused as to which boxes to check and uncheck.

i appreciate your helpfulness.

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Pippa, what editing program are you using? I use CS3 extended, although all the CS programs save the same.

My Splish Splash shot was saved as a Tiff and is 27.2 mg @ 240 pixels. After changing the pixels to 72 res and saving as a jpeg, the file is now 9 high @ 165.6K in the jpeg options window.

When you resize make sure you select the bicubic sharper for best reductions.

Hope this helps.

Kevin

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"You don't take a photograph, you make it."
Ansel Adams

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Pippa,

Depending on the complexity of the image, 420k may be about right.

The editing in 16 bits is something I do because as I understand it, 16 bits has a greater depth of color information. If I were only posting on the internet and never printing I probably wouldn't worry about it. But since I print, often 12x18 @ 360 dpi, I like to get every "bit" of info I can from the image.

One other thing I forgot. If you really want to minimize file size and you are using photoshop, after you convert to jpeg you can use the "save for web" option. Among other things, this will strip the exif info from your image and decrease the size.

Personally I don't do this because I like to see the shooting parameters others used and figured there are those who likewise like to see. It's often helpful when giving critiques, and I can use all the help I can get !.

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Jim Pope
Visit my gallery at www.borrowedlight.net

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Pippa,

I just saw Kevin's reply. The file size is, of course, dependent on the quality level you choose. I probably choose too high (12) and am therefore constantly nuking stuff from my gallery. My philosophy is that they're just pixels anyway and I'm nerdy enough to maintain a website to keep the ones I like anyway.

If you want to max out the # of pics, his advice is better than mine.

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Jim Pope
Visit my gallery at www.borrowedlight.net

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quote:

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Originally posted by pippafox
Steve - i can understand parts of what you are saying. but the bit about resizing and sharpening each separate layer is a bit advanced for my skill level.. all in good time.

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Kevin. I’m using ps2.
I’ve heard to use the bicubic for making images smaller, so I do that.
my second image uploaded to the contest is still pretty large. before I resized it, the info on the image size was as follows:
pixel dimensions 22.9M
width: 2448
height: 3264
Document Size:
width 25.91 cm
height 34.54 cm
resolution 240 p/inch

when resizing I first went to Document size and changed the resolution to 72. the pixel dimensions altered automatically to width: 734; height 979 pixels
then I went to Pixel Dimensions and changed height to 800 and width automatically changed to 600;
bicubic selected then hit ok.
sharpened, then went to, 'save as' (found my jpeg folder) and hit ‘save’
in JPEG Options, quality @10; baseline;
further down in Size it read “504.69K / 89.16s @56.kbps (I changed it to 128 kbps and the size did not
hit OK and I’ve ended up with a whopping 445433bytes file.

as an experiment I tried 9 high which results in 390.27k / 68.95s but wont know how many bytes that is unless I upload it.

its good to know I can use 9 high as I’d wondered at what point the quality deteriorates when uploading.
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Jim - very useful info - if you edit in 16 bit and convert to 8 will that end up with a larger file size than if you’d edited in 8 bits from the start? if the answer is no, then I shall do the same as you - edit in 16 and covert to 8.

also, if you choose 12 for image quality - does that mean others can copy your images at a good quality? I remember Carolyn (shootem) mentioning something about this in a comment she made somewhere as a precaution about people knicking images.

I do want to include my exif data in the upload for the same reasons.
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this thread is really informative, I’m learning a lot. how interesting you do that Steve, sharpening only certain parts of an image that need it - what a brilliant idea.
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phew - thanks for bearing with me on this , dunno about you, but I’m finding it exhausting. however it is extremely interesting as well as an education. I’ve picked up loads even though my files sizes are still too big.
pippa

Last edited by pippafox on May 7th, 2008 at 11:07 AM

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Pippa,

I use a free program from Google called Picasa. When I wish to upload an image I use the export function available from the "File" dropdown menu and select 800 pixels for size and 85 to 90 % for quality. That usually leaves me with file sizes below 200Kb. It isn't a full featured program but it's extremely simple to use and it doesn't make permanent changes to your original files.

Darren

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Darren
seems daft not using my ps2 for editing but i may well give that export function of picasa's a try when uploadiing. thats if i dont manage to figure out how to reduce my file sizes from all the good ino above.
thanks for responding.
pippa

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