Problem with file size.

Gladiator

Senior Member
Hello, been tinkering with RAW and Lightroom 3, and i save the final result in JPEG.

However that results in large files like 15MB and 17MB or so and everyplace i try to upload photos, including Nikonites Photo Critique (part of the forum) and Flickr (has a 10MB limit), the file ends up being too large. Now part of photography is the fun to share them with people and this prevents me to do so.

The question is, what can i do to downsize the file size without sacrificing too much of the quality and how do i go about it. LR3 is overwhelming and i don't even know if i can do it using that program.

However i do wish to keep the large size files as well.

Be nice to me i'm still a novice with post processing ;-)

Thanks all!
 

John!

Senior Member
I do all editing in RAW and export a smaller "copy" of the image as .jpg. That way I always keep the original RAW file.
When exporting in lightroom 2 there is an option to "resize to fit [long edge] [x] [pixels]". I imagine there is a similar option in lightroom 3
 

Browncoat

Senior Member
Image size limitations here are 800 x 600. Your images are probably 4x that size....just make them smaller when submitting. You can upload larger sizes to Flickr, but they will resize them down to 1024 anyway.
 

Gladiator

Senior Member
Image size limitations here are 800 x 600. Your images are probably 4x that size....just make them smaller when submitting. You can upload larger sizes to Flickr, but they will resize them down to 1024 anyway.

Indeed they are too large 2832x4256 i knew that, but HOW do i make them smaller when submitting, i didn't see any option asking me to resize.

Thanks
 

Gladiator

Senior Member
I do all editing in RAW and export a smaller "copy" of the image as .jpg. That way I always keep the original RAW file.
When exporting in lightroom 2 there is an option to "resize to fit [long edge] [x] [pixels]". I imagine there is a similar option in lightroom 3

I see, next time i export i'll try to find that resize to fit option, thanks. Also is there a way to calculate the end resulting size of a file, like if i know i'm limited to 10MB what [long edge] [x] [pixels] would that be, aprrox, no there,s no waste and a lot of trial and error. Is there a Math formula?
 

Gladiator

Senior Member
I do all editing in RAW and export a smaller "copy" of the image as .jpg. That way I always keep the original RAW file.
When exporting in lightroom 2 there is an option to "resize to fit [long edge] [x] [pixels]". I imagine there is a similar option in lightroom 3

Hmm this is odd i did enter resize 800 x 600 which is what i need to post here, however the end result photo is 399 x 600, is this normal or am i doing something wrong?
 

PhotoAV8R

Senior Member
I do all editing in RAW and export a smaller "copy" of the image as .jpg. That way I always keep the original RAW file.
When exporting in lightroom 2 there is an option to "resize to fit [long edge] [x] [pixels]". I imagine there is a similar option in lightroom 3

Hmm this is odd i did enter resize 800 x 600 which is what i need to post here, however the end result photo is 399 x 600, is this normal or am i doing something wrong?
I'm guessing that was a portrait-oriented shot. (i.e., vertical), as opposed to landscape/horizontal. The "800" and "600" represent the maximum dimension in the horizontal or vertical orientation, respectively.

BWTHDIK...
 

John!

Senior Member
I see, next time i export i'll try to find that resize to fit option, thanks. Also is there a way to calculate the end resulting size of a file, like if i know i'm limited to 10MB what [long edge] [x] [pixels] would that be, aprrox, no there,s no waste and a lot of trial and error. Is there a Math formula?

The [] represent dialog input fields see screen capture below:
screen_shot_2010-11-08_at_10.00.12_pm.jpg

this is LightRoom 2, not sure how different LightRoom 3 is
 

fotojack

Senior Member
You might like this little program. I've been using it for years, and, if I may say......idiot proof. :) It's called Irfanview. You can resize any photograph of any format you choose. It will even sharpen and colour correct if you so choose. Go to IrfanView - Official Homepage - one of the most popular viewers worldwide and download the latest version and practice with it on a few of your old non keeper photos so you can get the idea. Seriously, it's unbelievably easy to use; you'll wonder how you ever managed without it! :)
 

johnwartjr

Senior Member
Typically, you won't want to make the files super big to post them online - if the people who want to critique your shots have to download a 10+ MB file to critique it, a lot of them will say no thanks and move on.

If you're going to post them here for critique, since the size limit is 800x600, tell LR3 to resize to fit the long edge, and set it to 800 pixels, and maybe 100 pixels per inch. Then, it will scale the other dimension down to something appropriate.

Your RAW file is your original copy, you would export it to jpg (or another format, depending on what you're doing with it) and would size it appropriately for what you're doing with it. The RAW file itself is the large file that stays intact so you can go back to it, later on.

A file for critiquing should be maybe 500KB, doesn't need to be super huge.
 
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