File size for Web

GF
Posted By
Graham_Follett
Oct 3, 2003
Views
133
Replies
4
Status
Closed
I am a recent user of Ellements and use it for editing photos for my web site. I use the ‘save for web’ option to optimise the file size – although I tend to stick to the ‘high’ quality option.But I have just discovered something that is puzzling me.

I took a photo from a friend’s site. It was a jpeg and weighd in at 168 kb. I saved it (without any editing excepting the ‘save for web’ bit) as a jpeg again and had a file of 56 kb – great.

However when I took this off my we site – in the same manner as I took the original from my friend’s, it was now 188 kb. ????

Can anyone explain this? What file size have I really got as far as the web is concerned – particularly for slow modem users?

Regards
graham
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margaret_brock
Oct 4, 2003
Well, I never noticed that before. I have an image that is 48 kb on my desktop (saved for web) it’s on a web page. I went to the web page, right-clicked, saved to clipboard, pasted into PSE and it’s now 287 kb.

Hmmmm

Margaret
KW
Kyle_White
Oct 4, 2003
Don’t panic just yet, folks.

PSE2 reports the amount of space the uncompressed image takes in memory.

I’ve just done a "Save to Web" on an image, then re-opened the new copy in PSE2. On my Mac, Finder reports the file size as 100KBytes, but PSE2 says it’s 1.81MBytes. The original was a 4.1MB PSD image.

If I were to transfer the file to a Web site, I’d only be moving the 100KB compressed version, which is what other folks, visiting the Web site would get.

For figuring out what actual file sizes are it is usually best to rely on Finder, on a Mac, or Explorer on a MS-Windows machine.

Mac users have to remember that the Finder will also add in the size of the resource fork, if present, which is why "Save for Web" can really save some space, because it doesn’t create a resource fork.

HTH

Kyle
GF
Graham_Follett
Oct 5, 2003
Thanks Kyle

I’m not sure I understand all that, and I’ve no idea what a resource fork is, but if I understand you right I,ve got reuced file sizes on the web. And that’s good enough for me.

Graham
KW
Kyle_White
Oct 5, 2003
Good’o Graham,

Mac’s can use a two part file. The data fork is the actual file (image, document etc) and the resource fork can contain extra information for the operating system to use. Not all files have both parts and general purpose files (i.e.: images on the Web) should be just the data fork.

An image saved "normally" on my Mac takes 192 KB and using "Save for Web…" takes 68 KB. The difference being the first one uses a reduced copy of the image as its icon, which is saved in the resource fork, and the second just shows a generic JPEG icon.

When they are re-opened in PSE2 they both show a size of 1.16MB because they’ve been de-compressed and PSE2 doesn’t use the resource fork internally.

Am I confused yet? ;->

Kyle

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