Help Maintaining Image Quality while Resizing and Optimizing

[aegean]

hi all!

this is my first post here so hopefully i'm posting in the right section and the material i shoot won't offend anyone.

i mainly shoot glamour and landscape pics. i can't seem to be able to resize and optimize a jpg without losing quality. i see jpgs from Stephen Hicks and Playboy and the quality seems amazing while the size of the file is pretty small.

for example this wallpaper file is: 1280x1024, 96 pixels/inch and looks pretty darn amazing and it's only 400K in file size!

http://www.waaeg.com/wallpaper.jpg

as for me, i start from a RAW image that is converted to jpg: 2912x4368/240 pixels/inch/9.27 MB file size. im happy with the image quality at this point.

i then resized it to: 2400x1800/96 pixels/inch/3.38 MB file size and i'm still happy with the image quality.
http://www.waaeg.com/_MG_3425-2 full.jpg

when i optimzed it to 2400x1800/96 pixels/inch/420 K file size this is where i'm not happy with the quality.
http://www.waaeg.com/_MG_3425-2.jpg

my thoughts are:
1) how does Stephen Hicks (wallpaper.jpg) able to get such small size jpgs and maintain the quality. same with the playboy images as well.
2) am i doing something wrong here? is there a workflow that will allow me to get sub 400K file size jpgs and maintain good quality on 2400x1800 or even 1800x1200

any help would be appreciated. or if i posted this in the wrong section please let me know.

thanks
chris

 

[Ysarex]

2) am i doing something wrong here?

Yep, too much JPEG compression.

is there a workflow that will allow me to get sub 400K file size jpgs and maintain good quality on 2400x1800 or even 1800x1200

Pay attention to where in the workflow you sharpen the image. Sharpening is last step only after re-sizing. Prior to re-sizing the photo should not be sharpened.

2400x1800 at sub 400K is asking too much. At 2400x1800 I wouldn't compress the file below 1 mb.

Joe

P.S. Don't post other photographers photos in the forum. You can post a link but not the photo itself.

 

[aegean]

thanks for the help so far. i've also made the sample picture as a link as requested.

cheers.

 

[table1349]

This is the best way to resize. There are other programs. This is the one I use.

Genuine Fractals is now Perfect Resize 7 - onOne Software