How to compress photo's ?

Most email providers provide only 25 Mb max , I want to send a lot of photo's , what software to use to do compress those photo's with LITTLE loss of quality ?

Will it be easy to open for the receiver ?


Can I use Winzip to compress .jpeg files ?

Looking for a free utility...

 

For a free program, irfanview is a good one.

Most JPG files right out of the camera are too large. You can just open the file in irfanview and save it and ti will be smaller. Of course if you really want to make the files a lot smaller, you have to reduce the resolution. Irfanview will do this too. When it saves a file it gives you the option of how much quality you want. I did some experiments and saving at a setting of 70 or so will still provide good quality. Irfanview also has a batch file option that will process a lot of files at one time.

 

JPGs are already compressed, so lossless compression methods won't give you any further compression worth mentioning.
To get smaller files you can resize the photos (especially if they're just going to be viewed on the recipient's computer, you don't need xyz megapixels for that) and/or use stronger JPEG compression. But JPEG is lossy so you'll run into obvious compression artifacts if you overdo it, so you need to find some sort ot compromise between photo size (i.e. pixel dimensions) and compression level resp. file size.

Both XnView and IrfanView are free and have batch modes which will let you process multiple photos automatically once you have figured out the settings you want.

 

Just open in paint, go to image, strech/skew, and choose the percent you want to reduce to.

Tip = use equal percent on both horizontal and vertical, otherwise image will be distorted.

 

ignorance abounds.........

When you use jpeg compression, you are permanently removing information and detail from an image. Permanently as in permanently degrading the image.

If someone thinks that their camera files are too large, shoot the originals at a smaller resolution or 'detail' setting. And stop buying 7 and 9 and 12 Mp cameras for the 'biggest boner' factor.

The only 'safe' compression for image files is to collect them files into ZIP/7z archives and mail those around. If this means that you can only email one pic at a time than that's the way it is.

Alternatively, get an account on a photo sharing web site and distribute files that way.

 

@newsposter: Unfortunately, most cameras today come with 10+ megapixels, consumers ignorance in believing more megapixels = better has only led camera manufacturers to increase megapixel counts without increasing sensor size in order to boost sales by boasting of high megapixel counts.

Personally, I find the best option to reduce image size is to resize them to a more acceptable resolution, I usually use something between 720-1280 pixels wide or vertical depending on the image. These resolutions still allow for perfect printing at 4x6 sizes.

 

This is by far the best advice. Resize them to an acceptable resolution. 720 is a good resolution and more acceptable for printing out photos.

 

I agree, also, if you are not going to be printing them out, might as well drop to 72 dpi/ppi, that will shrink the file size right there.

 

In that case, you might want to consider one of the many photo sharing websites.

 

+10 for this suggestion and +Rep also.

IrfanView is very great with this stuff. And as bjcad mentioned; all you have to do is open the pic in IrfanView, either by right clicking the pic and choosing to open with IrfanView or by opening the program first and doing the File--> Open option....

Once the image is opened in IrfanView all you have to do is to do a File--> Save As....and simply resave the file over the original file. I tend to save as JPGs....just doing this will reduce the file size TREMENDOUSLY. If that's not good enough...as bjcad mentioned you can also go to the Image--> Resize/Resample option and reduce the resolution and save the file over. This too also reduces the file size by alot, without jeopardizing any quality whatsoever.

I've never used the batch file option that bjcad mentioned though...might have to give that a try sometime.

IrfanView

 

:sigh:

The ONLY reason that "opening and closing a file with irfanview" makes it smaller is because, by default, Irfanview degrades every jpeg image by 20%.

Users would be better served by learning to use their digital cameras and setting the capture resolution smaller.

 

Can you compress .Jpeg files with Winzip ?
Do you lose quality this way ?

 

Not really, it would be a good idea to capture images at max resolution, that way you have more pixels in case you need to do some serious cropping or large prints.

On my 10mp camera I routingly capture images at max res which gives me quite a bit of headroom to crop, straighten and enlarge images.

 

Yikes... if you open an image in paint and re-save it you loose quality.

There is a reason JPEGs can be large or small - an the smaller ones have a worse quality.

Now, about sending them - why not use the Windows Live SkyDrive - upload the images, send them the link, let them download the images, delete, job done
Yes, you can only upload in 50MB batches, but still.

And about resolution - there are advantages to 10+ MP - more detail - OK, I have a DSLR with a 10MP sensor - so that's reasonably sized anyway.

 

Not really - all you can save is in the KB area if anything (maybe 100KB over 20 imges or so)

JPEGs are already compressed.

 

Shoot in RAW, issues solved.

 

I actually do - and depending on the detail file sizes can be very similar, but RAW is generally much larger.

 

JPEG does compress files, and theoretically there can be some loss of image quality in doing this. Image compression is not always bad, in fact Nikon DSLR's have what the call "lossless compression" in one form of their raw files. So depending on the file format and the amount of compression, significant detail may or may not be lost. If you don't want to lose detail then save your images in TIFF or something like that, your files will be very large. I have checked files from Panasonic, Canon, Fuji and Nikon digital cameras and the files right out of the camera could always be reduced quite a bit without losing image quality.

The original poster's goal was to reduce file sizes, and there are various ways to do that. Some reduction in image quality may be a tradeoff depending on how much reduction is desired. He probably doesn't have the ability to save in raw or even tiff, or he would probably already know more about file compression.

The first problem is that the circuitry in most cameras isn't as good as software programs at JPEG compression, so a file right out of the camera can be compressed without loss of quality. Now as you are willing to allow a little loss of quality then you can compress more. I've been using irfanview for a long time, and when you save a JPEG you have the ability to set the amount of compression. I never knew what the actual number meant so one day I took a little time to do an experiment. I took a sample image and saved it with various amounts of compression incrementing from a number of 10 up through 100, then I looked through all of the images. I determined that on my monitor a number of about 50 looked as good as the original image. This test was done a few years ago with a 4 megapixel camera. The original image file was 1.5megabytes. Saved at 50 the file was 94kb, and looked almost as good as the original image. This is only 6% of the original image size. Saved at 90 the image was still 1/3 the size of the original image and I could not tell any difference between the 2 on my monitor. Saved at 80 it was 1/6 as large. Anybody that is curious, or anybody that is a doubter, should do this experiment on their own. I had always used a setting of 70 to 80, which reduces file sizes quite a bit and is probably still conservative in keeping image detail.

 

This true. Unless you absolutely know you will only be using a minimum quality image, it is best to use you camera highest setting capture images. That way, you always have more choice on what they can be used for down the line. That said, everything is a trade off. Sometimes total picture is more important than highest quality, or aspect ratio.

 

I quickly threw this together, I took a picture of a penny, put it in MSpaint, then saved it with a different file name, put them both together and cropped a small part then saved it as a lossless .PNG for comparison. I honestly can barely tell the difference, and the compressed photo when zoomed out is completely indistinguishable from the original that came out of the camera.



Full pic, albeit automatically compressed via photobucket

Usually I'll batch compress them to 30% size before sending off a pack of pics to someone, which knocks them down from 3-4MB per pic to around 400kb each, and yet the quality is indistinguishable, just smaller, even if full screened considering you'd need a screen the same resolution as the picture your viewing to see all those wasted pixels anyway. . Though I'll always still keep the originals for cropping/editing etc.

This is highly unadvised since it will permanently degrade the quality, you won't be able to zoom in, crop, or see it in it's full quality if you ever do get a higher resolution monitor, or HDTV to view them on.