Shrinking files for Gallery Display

ABarGrill · 02-07-2005

I have never really given much thought to how to prepare a file for display in the Gallery untill now, when I see that a couple of the pics I have posted did not seem as sharp as they were when I printed them. Is there a particular method that one can use to preserve sharpness while shrinking file size?

Thanks!

Alan

Nikon Bob · 02-07-2005

Alan

If you are resizing down you may need to use some more USM after resizing and compressing. I always seem to loose a bit of sharpness and have to reuse USM. Hope that helps.

Bob

matu · 02-07-2005

I have the same problem, I never now how much, or when apply some sharpening to my pictures. The pictures uploaded dont look the same way that in Photoshop or Picasa.
I've seen excellent pictures in the gallery with the same problem.

Nikon Bob · 02-07-2005

Check out http://www.vividlight.com/ back issues for articles in the Digital Darkroom section ( if I remember right). They had a many part Photo Shop how to.

Bob

matu · 02-07-2005

Thanks Bob, great Link.

felipe · 02-07-2005

If you are using photoshop it shouldn't be much of a problem, I made myself 2 very basic custom actions for resizing to 72dpi and 800px height/width, then sharpening (20%/0.8/1) and adding a 2px border.
Saves some time, and if your source files are 300dpi or larger the sharpening values are just fine..

After that I use the "save for web" function to get them down to something below 140kb. (JPG or PNG for higher quality) So JPG quality is mostly 50-70.
Since PS has a live preview of what the file will look like after compressing, you should easily be able to spot any jpg errors/rendering artifacts and loss of detail and adjust accordingly

cheers,
phil