Image quality and file size

[PrimaPhoto]

Hello everyone,
I've been battling with this dilema for awhile now and is really bothering me. I use ACDSee v6.0 to resize and compress my digital images, it works great for doing a mass of photos at one time, mostly if I shoot 100+ images in one day.

:( The file size is quite large and quality is poor, not a good combo!
I set my ImageMajik to about 98% with no sharprning.
My files are saved with a CAPITALIZED JPG extension in ACDSee does this matter?

I'm looking at other galleries and there image file size and they are great quality and small in size about 70KB?

Is there another program I can manipulate large amouts of photo at on time?

Thanks
PrimaPhoto

[Pekka]

What sizes you want to offer? If you have already resized and that is what you have in EE's UPLOAD folder set the path resize method to "NONE" and the file is merely copied to new path.

I do my galleries so that I make the "largest size I offer" in PS and the use EE*s IM to create smaller size() and thumbs. The largest size has resize method NONE.

JPEG is such a file format that large compression amounts may increase file size. The 99% compression is there only to help quality of watermarking (two-pass conversion).

[PrimaPhoto]

Thanks Pekka for the response I offer my large images for viewing at a size of 640 pixels wide for a landscape oriented page (the longest edge is 640 and what ever the height turns out to be).

So I then have my IM set 10 resize 100%, I only use IM to watermark the images with my copyright. I noticed I only have one resize method in Step 3: select sizes and where they are going - not sure how to get this to none.

Mark

[Pekka]

Thanks Pekka for the response I offer my large images for viewing at a size of 640 pixels wide for a landscape oriented page (the longest edge is 640 and what ever the height turns out to be).


So I then have my IM set 10 resize 100%, I only use IM to watermark the images with my copyright. I noticed I only have one resize method in Step 3: select sizes and where they are going - not sure how to get this to none.

Mark

What you see in "Step 3" are paths taken from path setup editor. As this is a database, all changes to path setup's resize methods will affect upload page (but not existing photos).

If you want to watermark with Imagemagick, the you must have a resize method which does it - that is why NONE is not an option then. You can try out how filesizes and quality comes out with different compressions if you copy your test image as "source.jpg" and place it in UPLOAD/test/ folder. Now the resizemethod editor's preview works on your own image.

Feel free to ask more if I'm not clear in my words - that can happen :)

[PrimaPhoto]

Thank you Pekka, I will try this out later. But right now I must enjoy the evening sun to take some photos.

Mark
http://www.primaveraphoto.com/photodbase/list.php?exhibition=7

[PrimaPhoto]

After some fiddling around I came up with not much!

Here's my story the images are edited in Photoshop, everything is good - save as jpg (100%) but when I upload to EE the images are not that great??

I use no sharpening in EE, I played around with this but didn't get it to work to good. My compression is 100, I've played around with this too.

It is dicourging after spending time in Photoshop then having a poor image online.

Looking forward to EE v 2

Example gallery:

http://www.primaveraphoto.com/photodbase/list.php?exhibition=57


Thanks

[Pekka]

1. Send the size you want to show to UPLOAD.
2. Set resize method to NONE
3. Upload to database

Above procedure won't touch your photo quality in any manner. Other possibility is to upload resized photos over EE's photos with ftp.

[alphabono]

Hi Mark,

Is the problem that the images are not very sharp after they come out after processing with EE's imagemagick or do you your sharpening beforehand in photoshop?

I also battled with a similar problem (found the photos way too soft with EE's default settings for sharpening). I then went and did some research about how the Imagemagick algorithm works.

Here are some links to some interesting things I found regarding Image Magick and how shapening parameters differ in comparison to photoshop or Gimp.

USM in imagemagick described including diff's between it and photoshop / gimp
http://redskiesatnight.com/Articles/IMsharpen/

Good table of values to use in sharpening, suggestions, etc
http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/images.html

Good discussion of imagemagick algorithms:
http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=004OSN

Filters output:
http://www.dylanbeattie.net/magick/filters/result.html

ImageMagick website:
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php

The result of all this is that I found parameters which give much "better" images based on the file sizes I want and the degree of post-processing already done in PS or Gimp or similar program.

The main thing that was amiss in my setup was the threshold. Photoshop/GIMP use a threshold value between 0 and 255 while Imagemagick uses a threshold as a percent of 1. Therefore a threshold of 5 in photoshop = 5/255 = 2% = 0.02 in ImageMagick. Mine was previously set at 0.3 (default for EE?) which would be 0.3 x 255 = 76.5 in Photoshop!! (Way to high for most uses). Therefore, regardless of the radius, amount, or sigma in ImageMagick, I was seeing no effect because the threshold was way too high. You also want to set sigma (standard deviation) equal to or less than the radius - check above links for rationale.

Maybe you're having a similar problem?

EE also doesn't seem to let you input a threshold of 0, which is rather strange. Not sure if this in an EE thing or an Imagemagick thing. Another anomaly is that you can't enter fractional values for the amount (ie. 1.5 = 150% is PS/GIMP), so you're limited to 1 (100%), 2 (200%), etc. I don't think this is a limitation of Imagemagick, as I've seen reference to it working with fractional values - maybe EE? Not sure.

Hope this helps.

[Pekka]

EE also doesn't seem to let you input a threshold of 0, which is rather strange. Not sure if this in an EE thing or an Imagemagick thing. Another anomaly is that you can't enter fractional values for the amount (ie. 1.5 = 150% is PS/GIMP), so you're limited to 1 (100%), 2 (200%), etc. I don't think this is a limitation of Imagemagick, as I've seen reference to it working with fractional values - maybe EE? Not sure.


EE 1.5 has some IM sharpening value limitations because at the time I noticed that certain values crashed Imagemagick. Later I have removed all those restrictions (you can always preview) so EE 2.0 does not have any limitations, all those values are stored as FLOAT (floating point numbers).

You can change the amount value storage in EE 1.5 to float with SQL command

ALTER TABLE `ee_resizemethod` CHANGE `ee_resizemethod_usm_amount` `ee_resizemethod_usm_amount` FLOAT DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL

[alphabono]

Hi Pekka,

Thanks for shedding some light on that.

Your comment also implies that EE 2.0 is almost ready to go? Is there an ETA on that?

Cheers!

[discusws]

1. Send the size you want to show to UPLOAD.
2. Set resize method to NONE
3. Upload to database

Above procedure won't touch your photo quality in any manner. Other possibility is to upload resized photos over EE's photos with ftp.

Hello Pekka,

I did searched for point 2? Where can I find it? I looked through all options but couldn't find it.....

I do nothing with resizing and watermarking.

What I did till now was upload picture place them in catagory and reuploaded it with FTP..

This can work but why when it is notnececarry

regards Walter

[Pekka]

Hello Pekka,

I did searched for point 2? Where can I find it? I looked through all options but couldn't find it.....


You have setting "NONE" in resizemethod dropdown in path setup, for each path.

[discusws]

Pekka,

thanks it = working :)

regards Walter