jpeg for the internet - what's the best solution?

jamiebonline

jamiebonline

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Jamie
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Hi all,

So I have been doing the same thing with my pictures for a long time now and I think it is not right. Maybe someone could advise. I know very little about this side of photography so be patient :)

I shoot raw. I process the images in PS6 and save them at maximum jpeg setting i.e. between 10 and 12. (some of you should know this). That gives me a file that is very big. Sometimes it exceeds 10MBs. I then post this to the internet. Now I am thinking this makes no sense. I recently read that there is no need at all to have files so big unless you are printing. What do you people set the size/quality at?

Also when I open the jpeg file after on picasa. (Picasa is linked to my picture viewer). The image is not the same as what I had done on PS. It needs better contrast and so on. Do you know about this? Maybe it is simply that the raw file I have been working on looks better than the saved jpeg. Very noticeably.

I also save to 8 bits though I am not sure why :D Any advice on 8 vs 16 please?

Now megapixels... I shoot with a D7000 right now. That's 16 mps. Is that really relevant in this instance of putting a file online to be viewed? If I had the D800 (it's 36 mps) would a difference be noticeable if the file was a relatively small jpeg? Would this camera not show better colour, detail and such?

Thanks so much. A few questions there but I think useful to others too. Just want to clear this up in my mind.

Jamie
 
Image compression on the hosting side will be your main enemy, I try to keep to 2048px at the long-edge with minimal compression in PS and Lightroom (10 Should be fine).

The D800 will have the better detail IF you are pixel-peeping, colour rendition may be slightly different although this is affected by many factors such as the lens and profiles etc. as well as your processing technique. Native D800 resolution is 7,360 × 4,912 so none of my monitors or anyone I know of would be able to view it at native resolution anyway ;)

With regards to Picasa, it is possible that it is modifying the JPG to make it more pleasing, as in Googles "Auto Awesome" feature found in Google+. Are you referring to Picasa Web Albums or the software package itself?
 
Thanks :) I use picasa, the software. Actually it seems to automatically alter even raw files.

True about the hosting. Facebook seems ok enough but I used weebly.com as a website and it did weird things to the images. Particularly it seemed to lighten them.

I wonder about 8 bit or 16 bit...
 
Hi, try save for web in PS or export in lightroom either should change your image into srgb yours are probably pro photo or adobe rgb neither is good for the net I use long side 2200 pixels and 100ppi this is for Flickr.

If you load above rgb on the net you loose colour and contrast on most people computers and only a few host the standard any way.
 
You can use Easy Thumbnails to shrink the size of a JPEG (either the size in pixels or the filesize or both) before uploading to the 'net.

It can batch process and also do a small amount of editing (saturation, sharpness, contrast etc) before uploading.

A setting of 85% in the quality slider can give excellent results with virtually no artifacts.
.
 
I use the Nikon view NX2 to downsize my TIFF or JPEG files to the correct size JPEG's for my website which is 1024x683 in my case keeping the max quality on NX2, that produces the best downsizes for me
 
I use a little program IrfanView to re size my J-pegs for the web,free and very easy to use :)
 
My advice would be duplicate the original file, change to Srgb if necessary, in Photoshop go to File - Automate - Fit Image and choose (input the dimensions) 1024 x 768 or whatever. Then apply a modicum of sharpening and save for web and devices.
That means what you put on the internet ought to look OK but won't be high quality enough for people to swipe.
Absolutely no point in uploading huge files to the internet, they take ages to download, eat up space and since most devices work on 72 or 96ppi that's what you see on your own monitor.
 
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