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toastedone

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Hi, Sorry this is my first post here and am looking for some help.

I purchased a disc from a photographer, and they told me the file size of each pic is around the 40mb size. when I check the size they show at under 1mb in size.

The photographer has told me they are compressed. They are jpeg files, I want to print some off the pics at a larger than average size. is this going to be a problem?
 
Have they given you some "web ready" files as well as hi-res? There may be two different size files for each image. Or they may have only given you web ready ones by mistake.

I would contact them and find out what's happened.
 
I am concerned because they are my wedding photos, I purchased the disc a year after the wedding for £200
 
I opened the disc and dragged the files to a folder on my PC i will take another look at the disc and see if there is a zipped folder on it with other photos in.
 
A 48MB uncompressed image would equate to a image of 4096 x 4096 pixels assuming a 24 bit colour depth (which is about right for a modern camera).

Converting an image to JPEG is compressing it, but not in the same way you compress into a .zip file. A jpeg image achieves its high compression ratio by throwing away some of the information in the picture - how much it throws away is decided by the user by selecting a 'quality' variable. The lower the quality, the smaller the file and visa-versa.

The size is also affected by how 'compressible' the data is - typically, the more detail / patterns / colour variation in the image, the harder it is compress, so a picture of a subject against a plain white wall will compress better than one of the same individual against a detailed patterned background.

All that said, I would have said 1mb is on the small side, so I suspect the 'quality' setting may not be very high; I would expect it to be between 3MB and 6MB on average assuming a relatively busy shot.
 
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I have just checked the disc again and there is no zip folder, just jpegs, they range from about 900kb to 14mb
 
My main concern is if I want to blow up an image for a canvas ect would I lose definition?
 
You need to look at the physical dimensions of the images. The MB size is related to the amount of information the files hold. That can change depending on colour profiles, and post processing etc.

Look at the pixel count for each picture. If you have Photoshop open a picture and under the 'image' menu at the top there'll be an 'image size' option. open that and see what the pixel dimension is and what the resolution is set at. This will give you some indication of how big you can print the picture.

If you are using a PC to view the files I think (and I'm not sure as I use a MAC) that you can right click the file icon and see the properties which may also give the pixel dimensions. I'm not 100% on that though
 
photogav said:
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If you are using a PC to view the files I think (and I'm not sure as I use a MAC) that you can right click the file icon and see the properties which may also give the pixel dimensions. I'm not 100% on that though
Click to expand...
This is correct. Rt click, choose properties and then click the details tab - it will towards the bottom.
 
To get a rough idea as to the size a file will print (very) well to, divide each pixel dimension by 300 and the result will give you an idea as to the print size in inches.

As has already been said, JPEG is a compressed file format. Many factors can affect the file size of a JPEG - highly detailed images will generally be larger files than those with large areas of the same colour.
 
toastedone said:
when I check the size they show at under 1mb in size.
Click to expand...

toastedone said:
I have just checked the disc again and there is no zip folder, just jpegs, they range from about 900kb to 14mb
Click to expand...



getting a bit confused by this, just how many are under 1mb?

I cant see you have got low res images if they can range up to 14mb in size, on the other hand if they are high res i`m not sure how they can be as small as 1mb unless they have been cropped the hell out of, in which case i wouldn`t say its a very good photographer.

I would take the question up with the photographer
 
They are just very compressed JPEGs. Those pixel resolutions look like they could have come straight off the camera. Quality will OK, but getting a 16mega pixel image down to 1MB means the JPEG quality would have been set quite low. Just print and see. If you're not happy, go back to him if he told you they could be printed at reasonable sizes.

How big did you want to print anyway? Those that are 14MB have been saves with less compression. Sounds like the guy doesn't know what he's doing if you ask me.
 
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