Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2007 3:39 pm Post subject: Saving RAW to JPEG
I hope I can pose this question properly. I have been shooting in camera RAW, and uploading to Elements. When I open the photos in editor, it first brings me to the RAW editor, where I do my initial tweaking. Then I open up the photo in the main Editor. Here is where my question begins. If I do nothing in the main editor, and simply convert the file to JPEG max and send to My Pictures, I get a file of a decent quality and size- about 4-5 MB. BUT- if I do ANYTHING to the photo in the main editor, and then try to convert to JPEG max and send to My Pictures, it will not do it. Elements is forcing me to first save it first as a photoshop file (PSD file), then I have to go to Organizer, and convert it to JPEG from there and send it to My Pictures. Although this is more time consuming and inconvenient, it wouldn't be that much of a problem, except that once it reaches My Pictures, the file size seems to be way smaller, aroung 1.75 MB. So I think there is some degrading happening during these multiple saves... is there any way to do some tweaking in the main editor, and then save directly to JPEG max, so I end up with a better quality file? _________________ Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. - Albert Gyorgyi
I find when photoshop will not let me save straight to jpeg from RAW, its that I have at least two layers open, which need to be flattened before it will save.
other option is is the image still 32 or 16 bit? Look for mode in one of the menu drop down boxes.
If I find another possible cause will get back with it _________________ -----------------------------------------------------
I was working with 16 bit files. I will try to change them to 8 bit before leaving the RAW editor and see if that solves the problem. Thanks!! _________________ Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. - Albert Gyorgyi
Keep us posted about how you get on with saving files. When you save to PSD you save the picture as a lossless file, and whenever I work on a picture in any way, I always do that. JPG is a lossy file format, and 1.75 MB sounds about right for a full sized saved image. When I am saving images for the forum, 600px longest size, I usually keep the file size to between 100 - 200 KB which is a pretty good image quality.
In Elements 4, when you save as a JPG a dialogue box comes up asking you what quality you want to save at.
I am not sure what setting you'll want for the forum, if you save the same file at various settings you'll get an idea of size.
I only use JPG format as an end user format, apart from what I get straight from the camera, if I work a picture I save as PSD, lossless, that means if I want to work it some more it is always saved as a lossless file. Working in JPG, and reworking an image and saving several times means the each time you save you lose more image quality. Save it multiple times and eventually it will degrade until it is useless. _________________
Thanks Keith... that's something I wanted to know, about PSD being lossless... which I had heard, but I guess I needed to hear it again, LOL. It just confuses me that the size has decreased so much, like I said, they were saving at 4-5 MB, so 1.75 is an enormous difference. Maybe it's not a big deal.. I am just concerned because the stock agency likes them as big/good quality as possible, and they won't take it if it is sub-standard in any way. I have a few submitted that were 1.75 MB, so we'll see if they take them. Meanwhile I will continue to play around with it.
Thanks so much for all your help, everyone! _________________ Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. - Albert Gyorgyi
Sure. The dimensions seem to be similar. For instance, the recent self portrait that I put up on here was 1.70 MB, 2448 X 3264. That was one that I shot in RAW, tweaked the levels in the regular Elements editor, then saved as a PSD, then exported as a JPEG. To contrast with that, I have another image on my computer that I played with only in the Elements RAW editor, and didn't touch in the regular Elements editor. I was able to send that directly to my computer as a JPEG, without the intermediate PSD step, and it has the same dimensions as the first example but the size is a whopping 7.57 MB!!
Since I am so new at this, I do not know how directly the size correlates with the image quality, considering the dimensions are the same... but I am guessing that there is a lot of information that is being lost in those 5.87 MB. Any thoughts? _________________ Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. - Albert Gyorgyi
I've just saved two images at best quality JPG at your image size. The size of the file is directly related to how much information is in the picture, so a close up a bunch of flowers where there wasn't a great colour range and the image wasn't very busy, came out, for me at 3.2 MB while a busy landscape with a wide colour range came out at 5.2 MB. That being the case I would think that 1.75 MB is probably too low for the stock agency. It might be a great shot but you could lose out if they think the quality is too low, so I personally think it'd be worth making sure that they get the highest quality you can strangle out of Elements.
So there are two issues here that relate to the file size of the saved image:
1. How busy and complex an image is.
2. How much compression you apply to the image when saving as a JPG.
Saving at best quality you are still going to get a fairly wide range of file sizes based on complexity, just to put your mind at rest if one comes out at 3 MB and another at 6 MB, they will be of the same, or similar, quality.
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