Hosting pictures - compression settings

[pikey]

I generally take pictures at about 1600x1200 + fine (I have a superfine-fine-normal setting) which leaves me with an average picture size of about 500-600kb.

Due to bandwidth considerations I use batch software to resize them to 800x600 and at 60% JPEG compression. This brings the file size down to about 60-100kb.

I've been using those settings for quite a few years and I selected them due to download speed of the client (the whole world was on dial-up) as well as at the host. I'm now wondering if I'm taking too much out of the picture.

Last night I was looking at some originals and it's compressed version and thought I'm taking far too much out. For example, this compressed and (b*llox forgot to upload it!!!) shows that it's completely washed out to the left. (Obviously having the original to demonstrate with would help more here!)

Having a play I think I'd be better off resizing but not compressing the large image, but continuing to compress the thumbnail.

What do you do?

[Gemm]

I personally process and save images one by one, never batch processing, as each of them has characteristics and I don't believe batch processing can bring out the best for them.

Edited by Gemm on Thursday 23 November 10:20

[Mr Whippy]

I'd get it as big as you want in one step (bicubic rescale), then in PS at least save for web and do high (85%) Jpeg compression.
When you start to get over 90% the file size seems to go up by 100% and the quality is more accuracy for the sake of accuracy than adding much to the "image" as a whole...

I think a complex picture with lots of contrast and colours will always need better (higher) compression settings and so be bigger!

Ever tried using PNG's, like GIF's but much better and lossless... Not sure if IE6 supports them, but Firefox does.

Dave

[pikey]

Gemm said:

I personally process and save images one by one, never batch processing, as each of them has characteristics and I don't believe batch processing can bring out the best for them.

Ah, I'm a quantity man who's trying to nudge up the quality bar! My site has about 80,000 images on.

For example: www.pikeynet.com/06/09/08/index.html When one of these images is enlarged, it's a great deal inferior to the original and I think that's a shame.

Understand I can't have that many images, at full quality (ie. > 1Mb) and keep the hosting costs at the current level, but want to improve the shots on there.

Edited by pikey on Thursday 23 November 09:37