uploading pictures to smugmug

quiksilverboi

how do i compress the pictures i'm sending to smugmug? this way it'll be quicker for me to upload.

jfriend

quiksilverboi wrote:

how do i compress the pictures i'm sending to smugmug? this way it'll be quicker for me to upload.

JPEG images are already compressed and that's what you upload to Smugmug. You have two main choices when creating JPEGs that dramatically affect their size.

1. The compression ratio.
2. The # pixels in the image

JPEG compression is typically measured on one of two scales - either 1-12 or 1-100%. On the 1-12 scale, level 10 is considered lab quality and will yield excellent prints and web display. On either scale, the higher the number, the less compression, the larger the file size and the more detail that is retained through the compression. Lower numbers create much smaller file sizes, but retain less image detail.

Level 12 is overkill for anything other than repeatedly editing (and even then JPEG as a storage format is not recommended for that). Level 8 will be significantly smaller than level 10 and probably yield flawless web display and very nice prints. Below level 8, some images will work fine and others may start to show compression artificats from the squeezing out of detail in order to do the greater compression. On the 1-100 scale, I've found that 85 is about the same as 10 on the 1-12 scale. I use level 10 for all the JPEGs I put on Smugmug.

You can also reduce the image file size significantly by reducing the number of pixels in your images. If you intend to order prints through Smugmug or allow others to order prints, then you do not want to reduce the number of pixels in your images because, generally, the more pixels you retain from the original photo, the greater detail will appear in your prints. If you are only doing web display on Smugmug, then you could resize your images down to something smaller like 1600 pixels on the long side and you would still be able to display all Smugmug sizes S, M, L, XL, XL2, XL3. Depending upon how many megapixels your camera has, this could signifincantly reduce the size of your images. When doing this resize, you must do it properly in order to retain as much detail in the image as possible and resizes images typically need to be sharpened a bit after the resizing. I don't do this resizing before uploading because I want to retain the option of ordering prints or sharing originals with others.

Andy

I also have a file prep page here
http://wiki.smugmug.com/display/SmugMug/File+Preparation

quiksilverboi

awesome! thanks guys! uve been lots of help