A question about file sizes.

fmw · Nov 16, 2006

Yesterday evening, I charged the batteries for an old point and shoot digital camera I've had for several years - a Nikon Coolpix something or other. It has a 1mp sensor. I made a test shot on the "fine" setting which is the full resolution mode. Windows tells me the JPEG is about 660kb in size. When I bring the image into Photoshop, it says the image is 8 mb. RAW files from my 6mp DSLR are only 6MB. I don't understand what I am seeing.

darich · Nov 16, 2006

i'm at work and don't have photoshop in front of me but i presume you're looking at the file size at the bottom left of the image window?
That isn't the size of the image when you save it and if you did save it, it may increase beyond the original size due to differing compression but i doubt it reach 8mb without some heavy manipulation of pixel increase.
I'm not sure what the file size at the bottom is exactly but it's not the size of the image....maybe someone can enlighten both of us!!!

Arch · Nov 16, 2006

I believe the file size at the bottom is what Photoshop reports as the amount of RAM that the uncompressed, flattened image will occupy. So its reletive to how photoshop performs on your system.... however if you re-save it without alterations the actual file size shouldn't be that large.

fmw · Nov 16, 2006

I did some research. Photoshop CS2 for Dummies says about the status bar "Next is the file and image information display area, which, by default, shows the document size information. You can customize this area to display other information. click on the size value to display a preview of how your image fits on your selected paper size."

So apparently it has to do with the printed document size that the computer has to process rather than the file size. Obviously the RAW images will be larger when they are resized for printing. I resized a RAW image and got a 34mb document size. I Was just looking at a number and making assumptions about it. I thought it was a file size. It is a document size. I guess I was able to answer it myself with a little research. Sorry for posting the question.