A question about Adobe Photoshop

[js415]

I have a version of Adobe PS 6.0 that I have been learning how to use.

I recently started playing with a few pictures using the filter tool to create some fun effects. I notice that when I save these pictures, I have several options. The default is to save them in PSD format. If I do that, I can only open the photos with Photoshop or Picasa. Sometimes I like to view pictures with Windows Picture Viewer. Any way around this??

My really BIG question. A normal photo, with a file size of 1.4 to 1.6 MB, after playing with PS and doing some adjustments, becomes 25-30 MB in size!!!

Holy cow, I'm gonna fill up a hard drive at this rate!!

Is this normal. or is there another way around this???

Thanks for all the advice and help.

Jerry

[Crocuta]

My really BIG question. A normal photo, with a file size of 1.4 to 1.6 MB, after playing with PS and doing some adjustments, becomes 25-30 MB in size!!!

Holy cow, I'm gonna fill up a hard drive at this rate!!

Is this normal. or is there another way around this???


That's pretty normal and isn't it good that hard drive space it cheap these days?!

Seriously, if you think about the number of pixels in your image (horizontal times vertical), then multiply that by 24 bits of colour information, you'll see that's really a lot of information in that one image. So why is it so small to start with? You're probably starting out with a JPEG file, which is highly compressed using a lossy compression scheme. By 'lossy', I mean the compression actually loses some of the information when it's saved and the viewer has a very good algorithm to replace that information when you view it. This lets the file be very small, but it has a cost. You don't lose a lot of information on one save, so on the first save the image still looks very good. But if you kept opening and editing a JPEG image, then resaving it, the image will gradually deteriorate and you'll start seeing artifacts in the image.

That's where other ways of saving your images come in. There are several formats that do not lose any information in saving, but they all take more space than JPEG... lots more space. TIFF files are a standard that all programs read, but they are also big. You can save a TIFF uncompressed or compressed, but the compression doesn't reduce the file anywhere near as small as a JPEG. In return, you can open, edit and save the image as many times as you want with no loss of quality.

Similarly, Photoshop files retain all of the information in each image, plus other information about color schemes, layers, etc., so they tend to be big.

So what do you do? Well here's what I do. I tend to save almost all of my images because I feel you can learn even from the bad ones. I save those that are bad in JPEG because they don't take up much space and I never intend to really work with them. I save the images I like in TIFF (about the size that you just mentioned) because that lets me work with them over time without worrying about image degradation.

Then when I have one the way I want it, I save a copy of it as JPEG for putting on the web site, sending to family or friends, or whatever. Periodically, I burn a large set of the TIFFs to DVD to archive them offline.

Hope this helps. There are some really great tutorials out on the Net about image formats. If your question was casual, this might have helped by itself, but if you're interested in learning more, here are a few links.

A tutorial on the basic bit map standards
http://www.designer-info.com/master.htm?http://www.designer-info.com/Writing/bmp_tiff_jpeg_gif.htm

A tutorial on advanced bit map standards
http://www.designer-info.com/master.htm?http://www.designer-info.com/Writing/advanced_file_formats.htm

[Gary Sheynkman]

PSD is a bit different from your jpegs and such. They retain the history and are not compressed to the degree jpegs are

[Jason Dunn]

The others have answered your questions well, so I'll only add this: if you can't get a bigger hard drive or make space, consider zipping the PSD files. A 4 MB PSD file I zipped became a 900 KB file - they compress very well.

Are you running Windows XP? Try the Disk Cleanup tool to reclaim some disk space. Also, check your Internet Explorer temporary file settings - it defaults to 10%, which for most computers is several gigs of space. If you have a broadband connection, you really only need about 10 MB of cache.

[js415]

Well, to be honest, I still have about 25 GB of free space on my hard drive, and I have yet to do any sort of disk cleanup or get rid off all the old junk and programs I have been accumulating for years!!

I'm sure I get clean up another 5-10GB without even trying!!!

I mostly was just amazed at how simply changing some colors, adjust brightness or contrast, using some filters, etc. would dramatically increase the file size.

If I really get close on size, which is quite likely the way I'm going, I'll throw in another 100-200 Gb hard drive, and just sit back and be happy!!!!

I appreciate all the help and advise.

A few more pics have been posted by the way.

www.js415.smugmug.com

Jerry

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Keep your originals, and save any changes to a different file. No point in saving to TIFF, since your photos are JPEGs to begin with.

[BadBart]

I have version 7.0 so I'm not sure which one of these applies to your version. But try one of these:

1. Look under FILE for an option to compress the file. It is much like compressing a Microsoft Access Database. It can make a file go from 25meg to 500k because it eliminates all of the stuff that has been deleted but left over in the file.

or this:

2. Goto FILE - PREFERENCES - GENERAL and select the SAVE SMALLER option and that will set it to automatically do a compress when you save the file.

Later, BadBart

[jarhead]

I know this topic is pretty old, but I was just browsing through and thought I would add my two cents.

I don't know if this was mentioned above or not, but it sounds like you need to flatten your layers. When you start adding filters and what-not to your images, Photoshop adds them in layers. This is what makes your 1 MB image turn into one that is so much larger. Flatten your image and you will be back down to where you need/want to be.

jarhead