Saturday, April 4, 2009

Reducing File Size of Images

Ever since the inception of the Digital Camera, it has become far easier to secure every moment of our life. However, something that has been completely overlooked is the acute wastage of space that has come in with the improving technology.

With every new advancement, file size has been going up drastically. The average file size of a photo these days is 3 - 4 MB. However, these images are mostly viewed only on the computer, and rarely are they used beyond that. So while all one needs is an image that looks clear, and fits the screen size on their monitors, they end up using these heavy images, which of course take up a lot of space, and are practically not worth the effort.

One simple solution to reduce file size and maintain good quality is by using Picasa. This is a Google product, which lets you view images on your computer, and also lets you upload images onto your Google Picasa account (upto 1 GB). So let me give you an example.

I just collected some of my convocation Pics (93 in number) which had a file size of 236 MB. I then opened this folder in Picasa, and right click on this folder in the Left Menu, and said, Upload to Web Albums. It then gave me the option of making a new folder in my online Photo Account, and then 4 options for file size to upload.

1. Original size (slowest Upload)
2. Recommended: 1600 pixels (for prints, screensavers, and sharing)
3. Medium: 1024 pixels (for sharing)
4. Small: 640 pixels (for blogs and webpages)

Now, since I wanted a decent amount of clarity for the convocation pics, I used the option 3, which is medium file size. I then uploaded this album online. Next, I went to the online web album and went into this particular online folder, and on the top left, clicked Download - Download to Picasa. This again downloaded my conovcation pics back to my hard disc. And this time, the file size was just 10.7 MB. And photos were of good quality too. So basically I reduced the file size by more than 20 times, I also have an online copy of the files, and in all, I have saved loads of space on my computer.

Let's all be responsible people and not waste storage space on our Hard Discs. This is a simple process for reducing file size and sharing it with friends as well. Of course there would be loads of ways of reducing file size - but doing it on a large scale, with no software installation required as such, makes life really easy.

5 comments:

Arjun_Khurana said...

its pretty simple. agreed. It also saves space, agreed here too. But it reduces the pixel size of all your photos. So basically its just resizing.

This can be done locally simply on MS Paint, or Photoshop (easier) with batch resize.

Just reduce it to a resolution of 1024x 768

Should be good enough for viewing on a PC, if thats all you want (like most people do)

Atul Mathur said...

Yes Arjun as I mentioned - it's not just about the file resize technique. It's also the fact that you don't need to install much apart from Picasa which is quite light. The entire conversion is so simple that you don't need to install stuff like Adobe Photoshop which is not specifically meant for file reduction, but more complex operations for people who are more professional at using these tools.

The theme of my article is not to get the professionals like the President of Lakeside Lense Lovers hooked on to this technique (:P) but to get the "common users" to find out a simple way to go about things.

Shreedhar Shroff said...

or something even simpler, no internet required, just a simple right click -

Install the resizer microsoft power toy (part of the tweak UI s/w)

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/Downloads/powertoys/Xppowertoys.mspx

Anonymous said...

Who knows where to download XRumer 5.0 Palladium?
Help, please. All recommend this program to effectively advertise on the Internet, this is the best program!

Anonymous said...

Happy Fresh Year[url=http://sdjfh.in/flexpen/],[/url] one! :)