Having trouble resizing and uploading to MM, what am I doing wrong?

I have previously resized images in photoshop and have had success with the quality and being able to upload them to FB and model mayhem.

Now, I resized these new photos the exact same way I always have, but the file is way too big to upload to model mayhem. I checked the specifics comparing this new resized photo and my old ones, and the file size is much larger, the pixels and proportions are exactly the same? I have not done anything differently, so I don't know how to fix this.

This is what I did to resize,
Image>Image Size
width: 640 pixels
height: 960 pixels
Resolution: 2048 pixels/inch

Then I "save as" and choose either quality number 7 (medium) or 8 (high). This has always worked, so I don't know why it does not now.

any advice on why this is happening and how I can fix it?

This is one of the older photos I have resized and have been able to upload to model mayhem

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …75523744@N02/10​353422933/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …75523744@N02/10​353239495/

Jpg compression is variable. Depending on image content, the same number on the scale can produce different amounts of compression and therefore different file sizes. Photos with a lot of detail, like the trees in your second image, do not compress well. The same girl in front
of a clear blue sky would have made a much smaller file. Similarly, high noise shots will not compress as much, because the noise is considered to be detail. Lightroom has a feature with which you can choose the maximum file size and LR will choose the compression, but in PS all you can do is to try progressively smaller scale numbers until you get down to what is needed.

You can do a "Save As" and set a maximum file size, and Photoshop will set the Quality accordingly...

Can someone kind of guide me on how to do that either with light room or photoshop? When I click "save as" the only option that appears is to choose the quality in numbers 1-9, but even when choosing the smallest quality number, the size is still too big.

In Lightroom, in the Export dialog box, In the File Setting panel, you can select the "Limit File Size To:" option and specify a file size.

In Photoshop, when you do a "Save As", lower the Quality setting until the file size is what you want/need.

There are several ways to sharpen, but generally, I only sharpen the part of the image that will benefit the most, & that also results in a smaller file size at the same Quality setting.
Selection for sharpening illustration.

I had a similar problem in that I could not get certain images to meet the POTN forum limit of 1024 long edge and 150Kb for direct upload to this site. This was even with the JPEG quality set to zero. The problem was traced down to the fact that I had sent some images to a lab using a colour profile specifically for that lab, and somehow that was then being used for other files too. The "normal" sRGB colour profile adds about 10KB of data to the JPEG file, and this is actually uncompressed data. The printer profile that was being appended to the file was making the file come out over 1 Mb! You can check the colour profile by looking at the file in Bridge.

Alan

There are two things to consider when you resize an image. The image dimensions and the image file size. When I want to resize to a specific dimension at a specific file size, I do it this way in Photoshop.

First I resize the image. Let's say to 1024 on the long side. Next I want to go to "File>Save for web". That opens another window. Make sure I'm saving as a jpg then click on #1 below so I can optimize the file size. When that window opens, I type in the file size I want, let's say 150k which is the max here for an attachment. Then I click OK to close that window then "Save".

Just be sure you resize "Image>Image size" before you try to save for web.

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Here's your image that was at 640 x 960 but at a file size of 2.10mb. Now it's 640 x 960 at 147kb using the method I described above.

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tonylong wrote in post #16382300
In Photoshop, when you do a "Save As", lower the Quality setting until the file size is what you want/need.

There's a much easier way in Photoshop to designate file size to whatever size you want. Use Save for Web and click on the little down arrow to the right of the Preset dropdown, choose Optimize to File Size, and enter the desired size. No guesswork that way.

*or do it like Gene shows in the above post.

tonylong wrote in post #16382300
In Lightroom, in the Export dialog box, In the File Setting panel, you can select the "Limit File Size To:" option and specify a file size.

In Photoshop, when you do a "Save As", lower the Quality setting until the file size is what you want/need.

Thank you, I did that in Lightroom and it worked wonderfully! I had never even noticed that option at the bottom of the dialogue box.

D Thompson wrote in post #16383257
There's a much easier way in Photoshop to designate file size to whatever size you want. Use Save for Web and click on the little down arrow to the right of the Preset dropdown, choose Optimize to File Size, and enter the desired size. No guesswork that way.

*or do it like Gene shows in the above post.

Yeah, I forgot about the Save for Web function, I just haven't used Photoshop much in recent years and never got used to using that function!

As for the Save As dialog it's pretty quick, as you change the Quality setting the little file size readout changes or you can move the file size slider.

The big advantage for me in saving as D Thompson and I described Tony is that the file size can be much closer to the required size if there is a max file size requirment. By saving for web, the metadata can also be minimized or removed to gain additional file size when needed.