Paint Shop Pro (Corel)

[Donnie]

As some of you might have noticed, after a long debate, I decided to put a link to Corel's Paint Shop Pro on the bottom of this Board. Reason at the bottom as to not be as intrusive. The link can also be seen on the Main SoS website top left margin.

The reason I wanted to be affiliated with them is for one thing, I do use and have used their Paint Shop Pro software for a long time - I would say going back at least 10 or more years. I am bringing this up because I know that Image or Photo Editing Software can be expensive. Then you have the other extreme of freeware.

I encourage you to try it out. After all, I use it, and I am more than happy to share my "workflow". At some point, when I see that there are enough folks here that have the Paint Shop Pro, then I will release a few "video tutorials" on how I manage images.

I can talk about File Sizes, Image Compression, Cropping, Image Resizing. I have learned what you need to know to get going the fastest without all the theory.

At any rate, I thought I would pass this info along.

So, I thought I would at least share a few small tips:

1. Did you know that you can reduce the file size of an image just by simply reducing the color or "saturation" of an image.

2. Did you ever wonder why your 12Meg Pixel camera most all the time will not produce an image with a file size of 12.0Mb?
Heres a hint: take a picture of a solid white background and a solid black background ! See what the file sizes are ! (Yes, I am talking about file size - not the image pixels width x height. This will always be the same)

Donnie

 

[cog]

Donnie,

decrease file size by diminishing saturation is like diminishing file size when e.g. you scan an image at 600 dpi versus 300 dpi

The higher the saturation, the more colours you have in the image's pallet, which in turn increases file size. If you decrease the saturation you will have less colours in the pallet and thus less different colour pixels in the image and a smaller image. When you save the image in some programs it will always ask certain values - usually one accepts the defaults - if your program doesn't, use the 'save as' and overwrite the existing image. You will be asked at which specifications you want to save the image.

 

[Donnie]

Hi Carl,
you are exactly right. Often times cameras over saturate the colors and I always reduce the Color Saturation first as this will reduce the file size as you say. I can take an image that is roughly 250k and bring it down to around 85k and really can't tell much (unless you really want to blow it up).

Most of us are only interested in "illustration quality" anyway - that is unless we are showing off a final piece of work or art.

Recently, I increased the size of the images that can be "attached" to post up to 1000 x 2000 pixels and at up to 160Kb. If you want to attach an image as high as 1000 x 2000 pixels, then one should make sure this pixel size image is still within the 160kb !

This is one area of the Board that I prefer to have images setup larger so that they can be seen better. Anyway - its just an option for those that want to take advantage of the larger foot print. The server can handle it.

The other known method of image attachment is what I prefer and that is just to use an image hosting site. Like photobucket, Flikr, and others. This way you can bury the link in your post. However, there are always going to be trade-offs. If that image hosting site looses its database, then --- well, we all know the answer to that one.

Thanks for sharing.
Donnie