Smug Mug Account

pizellie · June 2, 2011

I am considering opening up a Smug Mug account and would like to ask a number of questions about requirements on my end, such as file size, resolution, etc.

Is this a place where I can ask Smug Mug questions?

Andy · June 2, 2011

Ask away, we are here to help.

dbveto · June 2, 2011

You may find all your answers here http://www.smugmug.com/help/

pizellie · June 2, 2011

Thanks Andy ... I appreciate the opportunity to ask for more help. I've tried the Help section of Smug Mug, but just can't seem to grasp a concept. Its not that the Help answer is not good, its just me.

I take pictures with a Canon 5D2 and want to show my photo's on a Smug Mug Pro Account. Realize that the OOC file size is quite large for this 21mg camera.

I have trouble grasping the concept of file size, resizing, resolution, upload and download speeds.

If I want the best quality photo on my web page, what would be the recommended resolution, file size, etc.

I realize that these parameters play heavily into what size photo people would want to purchase, but I need a better understanding of these terms and what parameters to make them "before" I start uploading pictures.

Dan

Andy wrote: »

Ask away, we are here to help.

gluwater · June 2, 2011

Hi Dan! It's best to upload your original resolution files. Are you shooting jpg or RAW? You must convert your files to sRGB jpg's before uploading them in order for them to be printable. What editing program are you using? If you're using Lightroom we recommend using a Quality setting of 90 or even less, you'll be good between 80-90. If you're using Photoshop you'll want to use a Quality setting of between 8 and 10. If you go higher than that you're making your files much larger without any noticable gain in quality.

The file resolution is the dimension of the image in pixels. A 5d mrkII file is 3744 × 5616 at full resolution. The file size is usually around 25MB for a RAW file at this resolution. When you save a file at quality 10 in PS or 90 in LR you're creating a jpg that is around 4-5MB in size. Even though the filesize has been greatly reduced the file is still high quality. You just don't want to save as a jpg, edit it, save, edit, save, edit, save. Each time you edit the jpg and then save it, edit it again and re-save it it is applying more compression and you are losing quality. You want to upload a first generation jpg. That means a jpg that is edited and saved directly from the original file.

There's more info on on File prep here: http://wiki.smugmug.net/display/SmugMug/File+Preparation. Take a look and if you have any other questions please let us know.

pizellie · June 3, 2011

gluwater .. thanks for the input - I appreciate it. I do shoot Raw, but convert the processed photo's to jpeg when done. I do shoot and process in sRGB - so I am good to go so far.

I use Canon Digital Professional Raw Converter; Lightroom 3 (which I just purchased); Photoshop CS5. I usually set my quality setting at 12 in Photoshop. So I should lower the quality to 8 or 10 - right?

Again ... you really helped and got me comfortable that I am not far off getting started.

Dan

gluwater wrote: »

Hi Dan! It's best to upload your original resolution files. Are you shooting jpg or RAW? You must convert your files to sRGB jpg's before uploading them in order for them to be printable. What editing program are you using? If you're using Lightroom we recommend using a Quality setting of 90 or even less, you'll be good between 80-90. If you're using Photoshop you'll want to use a Quality setting of between 8 and 10. If you go higher than that you're making your files much larger without any noticable gain in quality.

The file resolution is the dimension of the image in pixels. A 5d mrkII file is 3744 × 5616 at full resolution. The file size is usually around 25MB for a RAW file at this resolution. When you save a file at quality 10 in PS or 90 in LR you're creating a jpg that is around 4-5MB in size. Even though the filesize has been greatly reduced the file is still high quality. You just don't want to save as a jpg, edit it, save, edit, save, edit, save. Each time you edit the jpg and then save it, edit it again and re-save it it is applying more compression and you are losing quality. You want to upload a first generation jpg. That means a jpg that is edited and saved directly from the original file.

There's more info on on File prep here: http://wiki.smugmug.net/display/SmugMug/File+Preparation. Take a look and if you have any other questions please let us know.

Andy · June 3, 2011

12 is unnecessary - 10 is ample, 8 is also quite good and will give you smaller sized files to upload.

Art Scott · June 3, 2011

pizellie wrote: »

So I should lower the quality to 8 or 10 - right?

Again ... you really helped and got me comfortable that I am not far off getting started.

Dan

I know all the powers here say 8-10 is fine and nothing is needed above that, but I looked at it this way.......I use SM to Archive my Jpg files and if something really terrible happens and all I have are the files stored on SM and they are all 8-10 in quality, I no longer have the best possible files to work with.

This is how my PRO lab explained it to me over 5yrs ago........all you do by using a quality of 8-10 is save a bit of space on the Harddrive (or servers in the case of Smugmug).....I also did a test of 2 prints one at 8 and one at 12...at 8x10 there was no difference......at 30x40 there was a huge difference.......

Personally...if I take the time to shoot in raw and process the images to their best, then I am not going to cut the quality by 10-20% to store for future use.

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