Small JPEGS

[Evertking]

I was looking at some of my photos. I usually export a social media PNG, and a JPEG and I noticed that my jpegs were all like 2 MB.

I remember reading somewhere that you need at least 20 MB for a 8x10.

I looking in export settings and see nothing I'm missing. I export jpeg at Max quality.

What am I messing up here??

 

[Derrel]

A little bit more specific information might help.

 

[stk]

I have never though about this before, but I just tried to convert/export three random raw-files to jpeg and they turned out as 21.3, 15 and 18.1 MB files. They would all have enough info to print way larger than 8x10.

 

[Designer]

How big are the jpeg files before you export them? Is the social media site downsizing the files?

 

[Evertking]

A little bit more specific information might help.

How big are the jpeg files before you export them? Is the social media site downsizing the files?

I take the raw file in to ACR and then PS.. I edit, then crop using the crop tool, I honestly try not to crop at all most of the time, but when I do, I like to crop very little. Now in the export, save as part of PS I do not resize the Jpeg(my thoughts were, I'm keeping the original size and thus Max image quality) but I do resize the PNG. But let's forget the PNG.
So, with the Jpeg ACR>PS>crop tool>8x10>save as>Jpeg maximum.

And then I take my cursor and hover above the image and up pops the file info and I see a 1.5MB~2 to 3 MB images.

Thanks for the help.
I done something, cause I looked at some older images and found they were 20MB but not sure and can't remember changing a thing.

I could have changed the way I export and maybe this is where I'm messing up. For the JPEG I export as EXPORT>SAVE for web(legacy) and In this window I click original and jpeg>maximum and never touch resize and change none of the other options.

I hope that helps, but that's how I been saving my jpegs.

I been doing this the wrong way, right? I should export differently for print.
I'm guessing I need long view (what's this file gonna be for? Web.. print?? And I should be saving my images as a TIFF and then make a decision, is it web? Is it going to be a big print?

I have tons of photos of my children that I plan to print but thankfully they will mostly be 5x7

Are all my JPEGS useless now? I been saving, thinking that "ok, I have this 20 MB jpeg that I can print as big as I want" so I got to going through them, getting my album together and seen 1.5 MB!!

My camera is a 6D, the files are large RAW..

 

[Evertking]

I have never tough about this before, but I just tried to convert/export three random raw-files to jpeg and they turned out as 21.3, 15 and 18.1 MB files. They would all have enough info to print way larger than 8x10.

How did you export?

 

[stk]

I have never tough about this before, but I just tried to convert/export three random raw-files to jpeg and they turned out as 21.3, 15 and 18.1 MB files. They would all have enough info to print way larger than 8x10.

How did you export?

From Lightroom. Default settings.

 

[Designer]

For the JPEG I export as EXPORT>SAVE for web(legacy) ..

I think when you save for web, it will compress the file. Try removing that setting.

 

[smoke665]

I never crop or export my files from Ps. I save them as PSD files import to Lr and crop/export as needed from there on an "as needed" basis, reverting back to the original file when I'm done. Why would you want to make destructive changes to your PSD file.

File size is determined by the number of pixels contained in the image. At a resolution of 300 dpi, an image 8 inches wide would have (8x300) or 2400 pixels, at 10 inches tall there that would be (10x300) or 3000 pixels. Multiply the width x the height (2400x3000) gives you 7,200,000 pixels. Since a pixel is the equivalent to 8 bytes of data, that would mean the files size would be 7.2 MB. Actually way larger then what you need for a web image.

If I wanted the above 8x10 for a web JPEG, I'd crop in Lr, then in the export screen of LR, "RESIZE" the image 50% to 1200 on the short side and 1500 on the long side with a resolution of 150 dpi, or 1200x1500 = 1.75 MB file size. Reducing image quality to 90% will have little effect on the image when viewed in most browsers, but will reduce your file size even more to roughly 780 KB. You could also reduce the DPI more. When I'm done it's easy enough to revert the crop back to the original file. Having huge web files isnt helping you in fact on some sites like FB it miggt be hurting you because of how they crush the files. Even if they dont you're more at risk of piracy.

 

[smoke665]

@Evertking I'm not a Canon user, so I maybe inccorect on information related to same, but my understanding on the 6D is If you decide to capture RAW images, your options are RAW (5742 x 3648 pixels), MRAW (4104 x 2736 pixels), or SRAW (2736 x 1824 pixels), which would give you SOOC file sizes of 4.9-21 MB.

When you take an image into Ps, these file sizes grow rapidly depending on layers, it wouldn't be unusual to grow to 300 MB. PSD supports up to 2 GB before you have to go to a PSB format. That's why so many, myself included, tend to do as much processing in Lr as possible, reserving Ps for only the heavy editing.

Image quality of a print and the size at which you can print is dependent on the resolution you export at. Generally a resolution of 150 is the minimum and preferably 300. So using your 8x10 example from earlier you would need an image with a resolution of 300 with a pixel dimension of 2400x3000 (8×300) and (10×300) to render a good image. Depending on your JPEG quality setting that file size would be up to just over 7 MB. Here's a handy calculator from the lab I use
Professional Photo Printing & Photo Gifts | Nations Photo Lab
For Web supposedly you can get by with a resolution of 72. To me that just didn't seem enough, I use 150 on resolution with an image size of 1200 on the long side and a JEPG quality setting of 97 which gives me a file size in the 600 KB range.