Photo size reduction

[Bigfoot1966]

Hi,
I am new to digital photography.
I have seen some brilliant pictures posted on this site.
But I see the file size around the 115 - 150 k size.
I have been able to take some good pictures as well, but if I go to re-size them from a 3-4 meg picture to a 150k file size I lose all the quality.
What my question is, what is the beast Compression program to use.
If I am send the picture in an e-mail, I let Windows compress it for me. But if I use ACDSEE 7 The quality just goes to crap.
I have been taking the photos in jpg format, I can take them in raw.But hence a larger file size again.
My Camera is a Pentax ISTDS 6 meg...
Thank-you

[glamy]

Hi,
Welcome to this forum. I may not be the best for PP but what I do, I reduce the resolution to 72ppi and a size of 19hx28w (cm) plus sharpening. The size may be different with your Pentax and I do that in CS2. You can resize in Paint as well.
Gerard

[Bigfoot1966]

Hi glamy,
Tried this with Paint Shop Pro 9
But it gives me the option of
Smart Size
Bicubic
Bilinear
Pixel resize
average weighted
What would you suggest I use ?

Thank-you

[MattC]

Bigfoot,

I use PS CS2. I take an unsharpened image, resize to 800pixels (just work in pixels, not ppi and inches) on the longest side and, given your options, I would select bicubic. I then sharpen the resized image as required. Ensure that the image is 8bit sRGB and save as jpeg. At 800 pixels it is easy to get a file size down to 150kB without sacrificing IQ . Images down to 500 or 600 pixels are still quite viewable and can be made considerably smaller. A 600x400 image is a little over half of the size of a 800x533 image. BTW, I always start with a RAW image, save as psd from RML, open in PS to edit, save a master unsized and unsharpened image from which all other image sizes are derived. The PSDs are sometimes huge. Whether you shoot jpeg or raw does not matter.


Cheers