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mongo
16-04-2011, 10:03pm
Mongo has mentioned this some time ago but it came up again during the week. Mongo promised to again set out his process. Mongo found his original post (20/7/2010). It should be noted that Mongo has no technical knowledge of what he is doing or how it works . He just knows from experience that it does.

Mongo is using photoshop CS3 – results should be no different for CS4 or any other photoshop as far as Mongo can work out.

To post it to the net, say, to Ausphotography, (which has a 250k limit) you have to reduce the image size and generally process the image for this purpose. This is the process which degrades your image quality and sharpness. Therefore , it is the effects of this particular step that we have to overcome. There are probably a number of ways of doing this but Mongo uses this particular method.

STEP 1
prepare any image fully to the point you very happy with its appearance on your monitor at home - sharpness, colour contrast etc. So that for all intents and purposes, it is the finished product. Mongo usually works in Tiff format but anything will do. Save the image (Mongo saves it in Tiff but again, anything will do).

Then, across the top tool bar click on “image”, go down to “Image size” and click on that. A small window will open. Make sure all 3 lower boxes are ticked in that window ie “scale”, “styles” and “constrain proportions”. Also make sure the last dialog box is set to “Bicubic sharper (best for reductions)” . Now enter the size of your image in the top 2 panels of this current window and make sure they are set to “pixels” and not ich or cm. These options can be set in the “resolution” box of this window. Mongo either enters the width (1024) OR the height (say 640). Mongo uses 640 max height as this is the visible height of an mage on the AP site without have to scrole up or down to see the whole image on Mongo’s monitor. However, Mongo has heard that some members have a clear vertical view of as much as 800 pixels depending on the size of your monitor. Then Press “OK”.

This then takes you back to the main photoshop window but the image will usually be (and appear) much smaller.

STEP 2
Now, click “file” go down to “save for web & devices” , this will open another window. On the bottom left corner you will see the image size (usually between 350 – 480k). Then , on the top right hand corner you will see a number of boxes. Go to the one labelled “quality” and click the little arrow on the right of that word. It will open up a slider that goes from 0 to 100. When you click it , it will open with a value already in it. Just put your curser on the slider (hold down the left mouse button) and move it right or left while watching the bottom left hand corner image size indicator. Please note that you will not get a reading on the image size unless you move the slider and then “release” the left mouse. Keep doing this until you get the image size as close to (but not exceeding) 250k as possible.

BEFORE you click “save”, go to the middle of the available boxes on the right hand side (you will see 2 tabs – one being “colour table” and the other is “image size”) and click open the image size tab. This will open a number of other internal options. Make sure that the “quality “ box is set to “bicubic sharper”. Then click “save” (top right corner). Give it a different name OR save it somewhere else on your computer temporarily. Mongo just usually saves tis to “desktop” for the time being. You may note that at this stage , the file is saved as a JPG file.

STEP 3
The Photoshop window will again open up with the smaller image referred to in “step 2” above. Close this image and when it asks if you want to save changes , press “NO”. This will preserve your original image in its original location. This will leave you still in photoshop but no image will be open.

STEP 4
(This is where the overcoming of the process Mongo referred to above actually happens)
While still in the photoshop from Step 3, re-open the small image you saved at the end of step 2.
On the top tool bar go to “filter” down to “sharpen” then open “smart sharpen”. Leave the settings to “basic” and default” but set the “radius” to “0.3” and set the “remove” box to “Gaussian blur”. Set the “amount” (between 110 and 150%) until it looks acceptably sharp. Be careful not to over do it . Press OK. This will have effectively sharpened the image.

Now, with the resulting sharpened small image, REPEAT Step 2. When you close this file it will ask if you want to replace the previous one – say “yes”

STEP 5
Now, REPEAT step 4 but this time set the “amount” to between 35% and 70% depending on where it looks best. Be careful not to over sharpen which can easily happen at this step. Save it again and again reply “yes” to replace the previous file.

You now have the finished product for posting with as little loss of sharpness from the original (that you had been happy with on your monitor) as possible. However, as Mongo has said, he is sure there are other and probably better methods.

DISCUSSION

If you have Neatimage, you can sharpen in steps 4 and 5 using that program. Mongo uses a combination of both Neatimage and smart sharpen in photoshop. Before Neatimage, Mongo used the above method which gave very very similar results.

Mongo surmises that each time you “save for the web & devices”, there is a certain amount of compression and degradation of the image file. Mongo believes the last 2 steps in the above process ie the repeating of compressing the image and re-sharpening, helps compensate for the compression/degradation of the image sharpness each time its done. However, each time becomes less and less and therefore it takes less sharpening to compensate. That is why the sharpening started at between , say, 110 – 150% and, by the second time round of sharpening it had reduced to only need , say, between 35 – 70 %. In theory, if this were done a third time, the percentage sharpening needed to compensate for the third time “save to the web & devices” should be even lower than 35% and so on.


Mongo has posted 2 versions of the same image.

The first one is labelled “swan one step” – this is where Mongo was very happy with the image on his home monitor and them simply “saved it to web & devices” at just under the max of 250k.

The second one is labelled “swan two step” – this is the same original image Mongo was happy with on his monitor at home but then applied the two step sharpening process he described in the above short article. Then saved it at just under the max of 250k on the last of the “save to web & devices” steps.

Hope this is of use and if anyone has a different method, it would be nice if they wanted to share.

SWAN one step
70845

SWAN two step
70846

Bally
17-04-2011, 8:53pm
Mongo Sir,

Always there with useful input, sensible comments and support for everyone. You are a gentleman

Cheers

mongo
17-04-2011, 10:16pm
Mongo Sir,...... You are a gentleman

Gentleman ??? - Mongo is told he is quite an animal and sometimes called "p*ss off". However, Mongo does understand your sentiment and is truly grateful - thank you.


I reckon drumsticks would taste good either way:D

Now that is Mongo’s kind of deviant who said that.

William
18-04-2011, 2:32pm
Maybe this little Sharpen and Web resize action for Loading into PS Actions will help , It's the one I use all the time http://www.potd.com.au/ADPOTDdownloads/ADPOTDSharpening-WebResize.zip To load in Photoshop, go to "Actions" and select "Load Actions" from the drop-down menu that opens with the right arrow located in the top right corner. - Bill

ving
18-04-2011, 2:41pm
Mmm... swan :D
*drools*


thnx buddy. useful info. :th3:

old dog
18-04-2011, 3:50pm
thanks Mongo. I just tried all this and it all worked ok.

Bear Dale
18-04-2011, 5:07pm
Thank You :)

philiph
20-04-2011, 8:29am
thanks Mongo, tried it and it works fine except that when I re-sharpen the photo it tended to increase the size of the photo to over 250k, is this normal or did I use the wrong command?

bobt
20-04-2011, 12:13pm
This looks fine, but I find that the easiest way (and the way I enter my digital images in my club comps) is to use a free program called "EZThumbnails". This small freebie lets you select the quality, pixel size etc and gives a before and afterlook. It takes a couple of seconds and works like a charm. A great solution at no cost and no learning curve to speak of. Just my one Bob's worth.

mongo
20-04-2011, 2:06pm
thanks Mongo, tried it and it works fine except that when I re-sharpen the photo it tended to increase the size of the photo to over 250k, is this normal or did I use the wrong command?

This is normal and happens more times than not. So, each time you go to "save to web & devices" , make sure that it is not over 250k by reducing the size as Mongo has indicated in "Step 2" (first paragraph).

Bobt - Mongo thanks you and William for your helpful alternatives - as indicated there is more than one way to skin this cat - which reminds Mongo, he has to go and do something before tonight's dinner will be ready :D

hdn177
25-04-2011, 12:18pm
Thanks for the info on using this Photoshop function. I have had a play and I'm happy with the results. Do you normally upload to flickr/PB at the new size of 250kb? I have generally always used the 1st method listed here http://www.ausphotography.net.au/forum/showthread.php?14971-How-to-resize-photographs-for-the-Internet > is their much difference?

mongo
26-04-2011, 9:47am
Thanks for the info on using this Photoshop function. I have had a play and I'm happy with the results. Do you normally upload to flickr/PB at the new size of 250kb? I have generally always used the 1st method listed here http://www.ausphotography.net.au/forum/showthread.php?14971-How-to-resize-photographs-for-the-Internet > is their much difference?

Sorry , Mongo can't help you with Flicker related uploads but maybe another member reading this can.

regards
Mongo

philiph
06-05-2011, 8:59am
hey mongo, now that I have used it a few times and have the hang of it, it works like a treat, though I seem to be using more for emailing than posting on the web. Thanks

Ross the fiddler
21-05-2011, 9:59pm
I haven't started using Photoshop or Elements yet but just use the Olympus Viewer 2 for this. It has it's resizing function (to the appropriate pixel size) & when I save it, I just save it as Standard quality (I'm not sure of the actual compression) & that is usually within the file limit size. I haven't noticed the degredation particularly (except when zooming in) & maybe other supplied programs may do it OK too. I will have to investigate the above photoshop method a little more. This might also work OK in my Olympus program & that's something I will try.

Thanks

HotRod
19-07-2011, 7:26pm
thanks Mongo you have done well ...

Tannin
20-07-2011, 9:31am
This thread is fair-dinkum unbelievable!

I'm not having a go at you, good Mongo, nearly everyone here does the same as you, I'm having a go at the idiocy of using the cumbersome brute power of Photoshop for this trivially easy task.

Compare Mongo's instructions above for doing it with Photoslug (which is designed for vastly more advanced tasks) with my instructions below for doing it with a more sensible program which is designed for light duty editing tasks like this one. I'm using PMView (http://pmview.com) but there at least a dozen other, broadly similar viewer/editor packages out there. Most cost very little, some are free, and none of them will be much harder than the one I'm about to provide instructions for.


Open your image. (you could do this 10 times over while Photoslug is still opening the first one, by the way)
Use the menu: TRANSFORM/RESIZE/1024x768 (or select a different size if desired)
Sharpen for the web: TRANSFORM/NORMAL FILTERS/SHARPEN (moderate)
Save te file. FILE/SAVE AS (whatevernasmeyouwant)
Have a coffee. You are finished


Yes, I'm quite serious: resize (3 clicks), sharpen (3 clicks), and save the file.

You can fine-tune a few things if desired. For example, I always set the JPG quality to 90% two minutes after I install PMView for the first time on a machine and generally never have any reason to move it, but the factory default setting of 75% is perfectly good for web work, and produces smaller files, so that's an optional refinment.

If you do the same actions repeatedly, it is very easy to automate them. (I'm talking easy here - nothing like the complexity and awkwardness of Photoshop actions.) So in practice I don't follow the steps above, I simply do this:


Either open the image or just right-click it from the file-open browser.
Use the menu: FILE/QUICK SCRIPT/1024_for_AP


That's it. Right-click the file, select the desired action, done. PMView will resize to the preset, sharpen, and save the result to whichever folder you specified in the first place. I could write you a PMView quickscript in 30 seconds. (Plus a few moments to email it and tell you where to put it) You could do it yourself, for the first time, without any previous experience, in under five minutes.

Now we are doing the whole job, including saving the file in 2 mouse clicks.

Using Photoshop for this little task is like using a semi-trailer and a 460HP Kenworth prime mover to deliver one letter. Seriously! Much harder, much slower than a postie bike, and all it achieves is making your like frustrating and complicated. (Oh, and if you are reviewing lots of images, the difference between the glacial sloth of the execrable Bridge and the speed and power of a proper image viewer is like magic.)

Get a life, good AP members, and stop using Photoshop for the quick little jobs it is so slow and clumsy at. Photoshop has a role. This isn't it. Use the right tool for the right job. There are at least a dozen good choices, probably twice that many, and none of them are expensive. Your life is too important to spend half of it waiting for Photoshop.

Kym
20-07-2011, 11:00am
But if you are already in PS, and you use PS actions, Mongo's publishing can get down to a few clicks; which is what I do.
Once you have a process done in PS, it is quite eaay to capture it to an action.

Tannin
20-07-2011, 9:10pm
^ It still takes longer. And it's harder to set up. And it's much slower to do basic stuff like open a file. Yes, it works, and the end result is pretty much identical. It just doesn't do it very well. Each to his own though.

ricktas
20-07-2011, 9:17pm
^ It still takes longer. And it's harder to set up. And it's much slower to do basic stuff like open a file. Yes, it works, and the end result is pretty much identical. It just doesn't do it very well. Each to his own though.

But isn't speed of doing a task relative to the CPU speed, HDD speed (for reading), RAM etc. If people have a decent bit of processing power, the time taken to do this in PS is short as well. I certainly don't 'wait around for photoshop'.

fess67
20-07-2011, 9:34pm
I certainly don't ever have to wait for PS.

I have not tried either method advocated here although looking at Mongo's narrative it does appear complex. (probably due to the written word trying to describe a few clicks) I upload to the web very easily from CS5 with very few mouse clicks and I am happy with the results.

<from memory> All I do is:

[1]size image
[2]reduce to 8 bit
[3]save as jpg
[4]upload to preferred hosting site


Click on 'my images' below and let me know if my routine is acceptable :p