Size Problems

[ChrisDante]

Paul,
I'm getting strange size problems, ie; I take one photo and reduce it to 402X303 pixels and it says it's 89KB, but I get another photo and size it to 397X298 and it's size is 131 KB.
How come and how do I make all my pics the same size and the same pixels?
Thanks,
chris dante

[slimjim]

Ya don't. You are playing with apples and oranges. Example, you take a 1x12x12 pixel piece of wood and a 1x12x12 pixel piece of lead they weight, kb, different.

[Colonel]

I think it depends on the size of the picture in the first place and at what dpi the pics was taken at. By reducing the size of the pic will reduce the file size BUt the sizes will be different depending on what the dpi the picture was taken or scanned in the first place.

Are you scanning pics or using a digital camera? If you are scanning then I suggest you scan no larger that 100 dpi. If you are taking pics using a digital camera i suggest you go to a fine not super fine quality.

[ChrisDante]

I'm using a digital camera. Most of the pics I want to upload were in jpeg format and taken quite large and high res. I copy the pic once and adjust that to the size, playing with the height and width untill I get under 100KB. Then I go back to the original and adjust that only once to the final size.
Should I be doing the process differently?

OK, here's another problem I just encountered. I have a .tif image that began life at 14,XXXkb in size. I reduced it to 89kb. the quality of the photo is virtually unreadable. Inorder to upload it I had to change it to a jpeg image, even when it was a tif very poor resolution http://www.railimages.com/album/Chris%20Dante/WS_RoundhouseBend_R.jpg Also how come it is so small, one of my shots came out nice and large, but most are almost like thumbnails?????
Dante

Thanks,
Dante

[ 25. March 2003, 14:16: Message edited by: ChrisDante ]

[Ironhorseman]

Chris,

If your camera allows it, try reducing the size of both the physical and pixels (resolution) before you take the photo(s). I had the same problem as you describe and it was easily corrected by selecting the "medium" size setting and lowering the resolution setting. The pics I take are still large, but if I 'zoom' out 50% and save the photo (as a JPEG) the result is a photo of good quality with at a size of approx 75KB or so. Give it a try that way. smile.gif

[jkristia]

I'm no expert at all, so I might be wrong, but I usually save in JPG format as I think someone once told me that that is the format with the best quality / compression ratio. Also when you save in JPG you have a quality setting from quality 2 (worst) - 12 (super), where 2 generates the smallest (but blurry) file and 12 saves in close to true color.
Also, 2 same resolution pictures of different objects will most definitely generate different size files since again it's a compressed image that is stored, and the compression somehow depends of the colors.
At least that's what I think someone told me, but maybe I'm wrong.

Jesper

[fitz]

Even though you shrink two files to the same physical size, the digital (memory) size can vary greatly depending on the number of colors, the density of the subject (make the file larger), and large areas of the same color (make the file smaller). I have found that it is almost unpredictable and I have been messing with scanning, shrinking, etc for years. Keep on experimenting. smile.gif

[Alan]

Chris, do you have any photo-editing software on your computer? I use paint Shop Pro7 with which I can resize and compress in one operation. I reduce the physical size to 700-800 pixels wide, and set compression to about 30, as I take high resolution photos on my camera. This brings the file size down to 50-60 Kb.

.jpg is the best format for compressing without losing too much detail.

[Colonel]

Chris,

I suggest you use the following program to resize pictures, it is simple and easy to use.

Irfan view (http://www.irfanview.com/)

I suggest you resize the original jpeg file to 800 by 600.

You can also reduce the colour depth for loading pics to railimages

[ChrisDante]

Paul, Ironhorseman, et.al.

Thanks for the information and suggestions. Your direction has made it much easier.
I downloaded irfanview and it tells me the size of the file and seems to be a very intuitive editor.

Latest views of the DL&W coming up soon

[Ironhorseman]

Glad that things have worked out for you Chris .. and we are looking forward to seeing those pics! graemlins/clappy.gif graemlins/yippie.gif