My pictures look terrible!

smaller file - terrible picture quality

[give it a go]

Hi guys i've just joined and it's great to find a place with such knowledgeable people.
My problem is this I have need to display pictures on my site for sales, I use a digital camera and take good shots - I then load them into photoshop7 and make the image the right size. The file is way to large still so i turn the picture to a jpeg and compress the file - but then the picture looks terrible. How or what do you do to make the picture load fast but still look good? because what I do makes it look shocking. And my competitors pictures look great and load fast.
Guys what ever help you can give would be fantastic, thank you way in advance
Mark

[trillianjedi]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Give It A Go!

Gut instinct tells me you are perhaps sticking with the original resolution (perhaps 300dpi or so?) from the camera and hence your large file sizes. PC monitors work at 72dpi, so anything more than that is a waste of filesize.

In Photoshop, click "Image size" under "Edit" and drop down to 72dpi then try it.

hth,

TJ

[ncw164x]

Another thing to check is change from indexed colour to RGB colour when you are resizing your photo's.

[limbo]

Welcome to Webmasterworld [webmasterworld.com]

If your images contain large areas of similar coloured spaces such a a logo exporting as a GIF might be a better solution - you will find this will compress better.

Check the images resolution - you are safe to go as low as 72dpi. <added> TJ beat me to this one :) </added>

Also simple steps like removing areas of graduated tone and replacing it with flat colour wil reduce the file size of the JPEG

[Serio]

Hi give it a go - It sounds like you are over compressing the jpegs in Photoshop. What number on the scale of 1 to 12 do you select when saving your pic?

[Visit Thailand]

If you are using PS 7 which is probably the best image editor out there you should have no problem.

Are you saving for web? If so you get a preview in PS that shows you what the image should look like and how long roughly it should take to download of a 28.8 K modem. You can decrease the size etc by selecting high, medium and lw from the right hand corner of this screen.

[jbinbpt]

In Photoshop, resize your image, set DPI to 72 and then "Save for Web".

[give it a go]

Hey guys thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly, I really appreciate it.
I've just looked at my dpi resolution and TJ and Limbo have hit the nail on the head! Thanks very much guys - very cool stuff!

[trillianjedi]

Thought that might be it....

By the way, tip #2:-

If you're creating graphics which use filters or lighting effects of any kind (this makes a big difference with "Gaussian blur" for example) I would recommend working on your images using a higher resolution, downsizing to 72dpi only when your graphic is finished.

I tend to work on screen graphics at 288dpi as this enables you to view the image as it will appear full size at 72dpi by simply keeping your zoom level set at 25%.

Do keep the high res. versions with all of your layers etc for future use/amendment.

I also second limbo's tip about trying different formats - .gif is better where you have large spaces of block colour, jpeg was originally designed for photographic images, so tends to work better where you have masses of detail and subtlety in colour variations.

TJ