What quality level CS jpeg for Smugmug?

dashphotography

I thought I read somewhere that saving the jpeg file in Photoshop CS to quality level 10 was just as good as quality level 12 but keeps it a smaller size?

Does anyone have any experience with this. If I remember correctly level 12 uses two channels or something that do not show up anywhere anyway?

I really do what the highest quality in case one of my clients orders a large poster size print from my Canon 20D full size file.

Any comments or suggestions? Thanks!!

Shawn.

www.dashphotography.com

wxwax

You got it, dash. Save the jpeg as a 10 instead of 12. That's for ordinary use. For making large prints... well, I'll let the pros here answer that for you.

dashphotography

Okay...Pro's do I need quality 12 for large prints?
Okay...so does anyone know if I should save at CS ...jpeg quality 12 on smugmug in case I have customers that need a large size print say 24 x 36 or 30 x 40 ?

wxwax wrote:

You got it, dash. Save the jpeg as a 10 instead of 12. That's for ordinary use. For making large prints... well, I'll let the pros here answer that for you.

Nikolai

I'm not a pro, but..

dashphotography wrote:

Okay...so does anyone know if I should save at CS ...jpeg quality 12 on smugmug in case I have customers that need a large size print say 24 x 36 or 30 x 40 ?

here are a few things to consider:

If you shooting RAW, and process in PS (16bit), then you probably need to save your work as TIFF to avoid any impact on image quality.

If, however, JPEG is your only option, it is safer to say that for this size of prints you'd need the best quality you can get. That is, of course, if your images can deliver that output size in the first place.

Otherwise - you 'd have to try. And your mileage can vary from image to image. Wide open landscape, woods shot, stock photo and studio closeup portrait - they all will come with their own differences.

HTH

Baldy

I know this seems like blasphemy, but even on very large prints (actually, especially on very large prints) I've never met the person who could tell the difference between 10 and 12. I know a few who think they can tell the difference between 9 and 10, but that's controversial.

Counterintuitively, both dpi and compression artifacts are less likely to be noticed on large prints. Herre's a good thread on the resolution piece:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=177&highlight=resolution

As an experiment, over Christmas I printed two 30x40s of my present to my wife:



One was 100 dpi, the other 200 dpi. JPEG compression was 8. About a dozen people were asked to tell which was which. Everyone said they were of stunning quality.

Only onethumb could tell the difference, and he did it by following a single strand of hair that had fallen over the bride's face, middle left. He said it was hard, but he noticed some aliasing in that strand of hair. I couldn't see it, perhaps because my 51-year old eyes couldn't get as close as his.

wxwax

Good stuff. And a great family poster.

Nikolai

You might also agree...
.. that this particular image is a very JPEG friendly one (you know the internals, so I'm not going into jpeg-101 details here:-). In this specific layout more accurate thing to consider would be the size of each sub-shot - which would be NOT 30x40, but rather 4x6 or MAYBE 8x10. In which case it is really hard to tell 8 from 12..

As I said before, JPEG is very data-dependent. If you take a SINGLE shot of the heavy foliage (or a fine portrait, kinda you showed of "babe magnet" Ben:-), I'm pretty sure you WILL be able to tell the difference between 8, 10 and 12 on 30x40 - even without the lupe:-)

--
Did you get my response about the 500Kb issue?

Cheers!

Baldy

Many experts have tried to find a photo where you could tell 10 from 12 and haven't been able to, to my knowledge. Uusally they try on images with very sharp lines, or slowly changing broad areas with saturated colors, like a red car.

We tried it on a 24x30 of this one and the only thing people could conclude was it was stunning at jpeg 8:

marlinspike

But now lets say that as a result of cropping you are left with a 4 megapixel image. Now hows that going to look at a 10 30x40 vs. a 12 30x40?
Richard

Nikolai

I would tend to agree

Baldy wrote:

Many experts have tried to find a photo where you could tell 10 from 12 and haven't been able to, to my knowledge. Uusally they try on images with very sharp lines, or slowly changing broad areas with saturated colors, like a red car..

..that for the most shots it really does not matter.

However, "stranded hair" shot you mentioned printed at 30x40 will more likely bring out some issues compared to a "general" one you have just posted.

Again, with JPEG you need to try. And the saddest part is that for a different image you'd have to do it again:-(
I guess all I can say boils to the following: if I were to print 30x40 (whcih I don't do every day:-), I'd probably stick with the least amount of compression, as far as bandwidth, HDD and web space fees would not cover for a single spoiled printout.

Just my $.02:-):D

Cheers!

Baldy

Nikolai wrote:

However, "stranded hair" shot you mentioned printed at 30x40 will more likely bring out some issues compared to a "general" one you have just posted.

The one I just posted does have stranded hair. The stranded hair in it is harder to reproduce than one where the hair is more prominent (closer to the lens) because the thinner the strand (far away) the fewer pixels it represents.

Baldy

marlinspike wrote:

But now lets say that as a result of cropping you are left with a 4 megapixel image. Now hows that going to look at a 10 30x40 vs. a 12 30x40?
Richard

That's a good question because the JPEG compression block is 8x8 and at 58 dpi (4 megapixel image at 30x40 inches) you'd have a better chance of picking out the compression blocks.

We don't need to print a 30x40 to find out. If someone wants to prepare a test image at 58 dpi at JPEG 12 and 10, I'd be happy to fire off free 4x6s so you can judge for yourself. You'd be able to notice it more on a smaller image than a large one because you'll look at it more closely.

Thanks,
Baldy

Nikolai

OK, you did your homework then:-)

Baldy wrote:

The one I just posted does have stranded hair. The stranded hair in it is harder to reproduce than one where the hair is more prominent (closer to the lens) because the thinner the strand (far away) the fewer pixels it represents.

I have absolutely no reason to doubt your words that this picture looks great at 8.

However, again, if I were to make 30x40, especially for someone else, I would most likely consider (on my Sony 828, sorry, don't have a budget for that 80K canon super-tube - yet:-)) the following:
8 mp RAW --> 16-bit PS processing --> CMYK --> TIFF
as opposed to
3mp std --> 8 bit PS processing --> Jpeg at 8

Just to be sure..

Again, a single spoiled 30x40 print would ruin all my other savings on that process...
Don't you agree? Do I miss something? What's the benefits of having level 8 jpeg in this case except HDD space and bandwidth? Can level 8 jpeg theoreticallly be better than 10 or 12? Or than a TIFF? I highly doudbt it.
So - why take any chances?

I'm not a high volume poster printing shop. Hence, for me an overhead of even trying to find the "optimal" resolution/compression on such prints would be a very costly process. I'm much better off sending the best possible quality image I can get to the press machines...:-)

Cheers!

Michiel de Brieder

Same here as with Nikolai
call it mental satisfaction, but I always shoot the full 8.2 MP RAW on my 20D, I save PSDs for edited shots and I make JPEGs for web usage afterwards. If I decide to print one of the shots I take the PSD and take the best JPEG I can get from it. Just to be sure I don't print much, but it gives me a good feeling when uploading the least compressed photo. I'm no technical expert, just a guy who does some prints sometimes if I enjoy a photo very much
Still I find this an interesting discussion, much to learn thanks guys!

Baldy

Nikolai wrote:

Just to be sure...

We place a guideline on our pages of JPEG 10 because it gives our customers a psychological boost over something like 8 or 9. Labs like whcc (a very good lab) say in their FAQs that they don't like to tangle with jpeg 12 on large prints if they can help it because it generally doubles the file size over jpeg 10 without a noticeable increase in quality.

It's my experience that people who know jpeg/see a lot of files are more relaxed. For example, Gordon Richardson at photo.net who wrote this fine article, http://www.photo.net/learn/jpeg/ , never saves his files above 75%.

In the hundreds of thousands of prints we've seen go through EZ Prints, I have never come across a print that was affected by jpeg artifacts, at least that a customer noticed. I have seen thousands, however, where skin tone was a problem and I'd be delighted if we finessed over skin tone values like we do compression.

It sorta reminds me of entering the Escape From Alcatraz Triathlon. Thousands of competitors and spectators are scared to death of shark bites. But no one thinks twice about driving up the freeway to get there. Guess where the danger lies?

But if 100 MB files don't bother you and the mental comfort is important, I totally understand. We'll be standing by to answer why the colors came out as they did.

Nikolai

It's soothing to know..
It's very helpful to know these stats, I appreciate the sharing. Frankly, I save most of my PSDs as 10 prior to uploading to SM. Yet again, I don't print 30x40 that often and I normally don't expect anybody to do it.

Thanks for the article!

Baldy wrote:

It sorta reminds me of entering the Escape From Alcatraz Triathlon. Thousands of competitors and spectators are scared to death of shark bites. But no one thinks twice about driving up the freeway to get there. Guess where the danger lies?

I din't know it existed, sounds like fun:-) Thanks for the info, I checked its home page. My biggest issues here would be the current and the temperature:-)

Baldy wrote:

But if 100 MB files don't bother you and the mental comfort is important, I totally understand. We'll be standing by to answer why the colors came out as they did.

Not very accurate analogy. My RAWs are 17Mb, DNG makes them 8-9Mb. No matter how insane I go with my postprocess I will still end up with final file being around or way under 10Mb, which is an order of magnitude difference with 100Mb mark.

--
Did you check your email yet?

Cheers!

Baldy

Nikolai wrote:

Not very accurate analogy. My RAWs are 17Mb, DNG makes them 8-9Mb. No matter how insane I go with my postprocess I will still end up with final file being around or way under 10Mb, which is an order of magnitude difference with 100Mb mark.

Must be low dpi. Most 200 dpi tiffs are ~125 MB at 30x40.

marlinspike

I think he was referring to quality 12 jpegs

Richard

Nikolai

Yessir

marlinspike wrote:

I think he was referring to quality 12 jpegs

Richard

Thanks, Richard!

Unless I'm mistaken 828 does not let me to produce 30x40 200 dpi images even in RAW.. Am I wrong?? I don't remember exact size of the TIFF file (almost never use it), but it's waaaaay below 100Mb radar:-)

marlinspike

Well Nikolai, you could upsample to 200dpi and then save as tiff. I leave the upsampling to smugmug since they made a 24x36 from a quality 12 jpeg I had cropped down to 4mp that the customer was very pleased with (I never saw it).

Richard

Nikolai

Well, yeah..

marlinspike wrote:

Well Nikolai, you could upsample to 200dpi and then save as tiff. I leave the upsampling to smugmug since they made a 24x36 from a quality 12 jpeg I had cropped down to 4mp that the customer was very pleased with (I never saw it).

Richard,
sure I can - as well as apply magic 110% PS trick and make a 300dpi 30x40 poster out of cellphone camera picture.:-)

I'm afraid we all (esp me:-) went a bit theoretical on this issue. :-)

The questions was: when saving PSD as JPEG, what quality level should be chosen: 8, 10 or 12.
I guess, Baldy's point, supported by all the pikchas they had to deal with at SM, was clearly stearing towards 8 or 10.
I was more like on 10-12 side, at least if this is your once-in-a-lifetime kinda deal, simply trying to be rather safe than sorry, and space being so cheap (compared to the price of one poster). I have no problems with 10 or 8 on a regular basis, though.

Cheers!

mercphoto

To upsample or not

marlinspike wrote:

Well Nikolai, you could upsample to 200dpi and then save as tiff. I leave the upsampling to smugmug since they made a 24x36 from a quality 12 jpeg I had cropped down to 4mp that the customer was very pleased with (I never saw it).

My take on this has always been if Smugmug/EZPrints has sophisticated RIP software on their big printers, why in the world am I doing any upsampling myself? Maybe if I had a huge Epson 4000 at home I would, but I don't.

I've done 20x30 through Smugmug from in-camera captured JPG's on a Digital Rebel that looked great, with zero post-processing. This works out to 100 dpi folks.

All upsampling can do is smooth out edges, get rid of jaggies. It can't add detail. And I'm not sure that upsampling twice is a good idea. I could be wrong. Maybe I'm just lazy.

Baldy

You're exactly right. Our recommendations are jpeg 10 and let the lab upsample. They are so very good at it.

Thanks,
Baldy

dashphotography

Wow! Thanks for all of the replies!!!!
I'm new here and new to my professional account at Smugmug. I didn't think my post would generate such conversation Anyhow..thank you all for your replies. Smugmug was my preferred choice for hosting my pics as I wanted to be able to fix them and then upload one time and forget about touching them again. I have no idea how many clients will want 20 x X or bigger prints from my Canon 20D but I just wanted to make sure the file I uploaded would be sufficient.

If the concensus is that size 10 is good for up to say a 20x30 then I may go with the smaller file to save on my upload time, and just have them email me for anything bigger and I can use the original to resave to a 12 quality, upload it, and then turn on the ability for them to buy the larger sizes for just that one print. (hmmm. can you turn on 24x36 ordering for just one particular print??? I think so right?)

Thanks for the info on the SmugMug Explorer option for uploading lots of files at once. It worked perfect! Even told me one file that did not upload that Smug Mugs built in version would not have notified me on! I like it.

I have another question but I'll post it in a new topic regarding how my images look when viewing with smugmug.

Thanks Again! Shawn.

Baldy wrote:

You're exactly right. Our recommendations are jpeg 10 and let the lab upsample. They are so very good at it.

Thanks,
Baldy

Nikolai

Thank you for trying SE:-)

dashphotography wrote:

Thanks for the info on the SmugMug Explorer option for uploading lots of files at once. It worked perfect! Even told me one file that did not upload that Smug Mugs built in version would not have notified me on! I like it.

Glad you liked it:-) I promise you will like it even more later:-)

Cheers!

marlinspike

Ah, I forgot that some people have to consider upload times. Here at college I enjoy a T1 with something like 9 seconds for an uncropped RAW file saved as quality 12 JPEG from my dRebel.
Richard

Baldy

dashphotography wrote:

Thanks for the info on the SmugMug Explorer option for uploading lots of files at once. It worked perfect!

I'm actively pointing people to it because I've heard nothing but good about it.