Software to compress JPG file to smaller file size

[TenOC]

My camera takes a JPG file that is about 5 to 7 Meg big. This is a large file to email. I am looking for a software program that will do a batch "compression" of the photos to a smaller file size.

[BarneyS]

Another vote here for Faststone Photo Resizer. It is free, easy to use, and I believe it does everything you asked about.
Barney

[Bucky_Badger]

Fast image resizer works great

http://adionsoft.net/fastimageresize/

[toedtoes]

Healeyman wrote:
PS: Didja ever wonder why new printers print in 8 1/2" x 11" format but most of the picture frames you can buy are in 8" X 10" or 11" X 14"? Hmmmmmm.............

Because a computer printer prints both photos and documents. The standard document size is "letter" at 8-1/2 x 11. They will print "legal" at 8-1/2 x 14 also. That also allows folks to print 4x6, 5x7 and 8x10 photos which are the standard smaller personal photo sizes (snapshots and portraits) that can be displayed on shelves, etc. As printing documents came long before printing photos on home printers, the 8-1/2 width was already established as the standard.

You can get dedicated photo printers that will print at 4x6 only or up to a 5x7 or a 4x12 panoramic. Or you can get a large printer that will print 11" wide instead of 8-12 (and still be affordable).

Personally, I have found it more cost effective to have my photos printed professionally rather than doing it on a home printer. I only print my best images and I print them large (up to 20x30 so far). I develop each image at its best ratio (3:2 or 5:4 most commonly) and pick the print size according to that ratio so I know exactly how my final print will look. I never have to worry about running out of ink, paper jams, crooked paper pulls, etc. or cutting an 8x10 photo out of an 8-1/2x11 photo paper.

[colonelcorto]

It sounds like the file size is not the real problem but rather your method of transfer: email. Do you just need to save the pictures or are you trying to archive them? Many good answers above I would only like to add that you can rent a seedbox for this purpose. A seedbox is very versatile, storage space is scalable, and it can serve many purposes. Explore Linux.

[joebedford]

Healeyman wrote:
The ONLY time the pixel count comes into play is in printing.

I NEVER print photos but I do crop them. Cropping can turn a junk photo into a keeper if you have enough pixels to work with.

[joebedford]

I use Fotosizer - it's exactly what you asked for.

No, you don't need to change the size of your jpg's to make the file size smaller.

[mileshuff]

In Windows, right click on photos and click Send To, Select mail recipient. Windows will show a selection to reduce the photo size. Select desired size and click attach. Your default email program will open with the reduced size photos attached. Send them to yourself or to another person.

[Bill_Satellite]

If you have Outlook e-mail server you can select the pictures and select that you want to send them as an e-mail attachment. If will give you a couple of reduction options and you will end up with nice small pics plus the originals untouched. It takes about 10 seconds to do an entire batch and you are done.

[NRALIFR]

Gdetrailer wrote:

NRALIFR wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:

NRALIFR wrote:
You don't need to compress it any more. What you need is software that will reduce the image size (H x W) and quality, which in most cases will not noticeably affect the image for forum posting use. I believe Irfanview will do that, but to be honest I haven't really played with it much so I could be wrong. I have an old image editing program called Image Expert that has a very easy to use interface that allows you to choose four levels of image quality, and change the image size in pixels while maintaining the height to width aspect ratio. Doing that can have a dramatic effect on the file size, and still have an image suitable for emailing or forum posting.

Unfortunately, Image Expert isn't available anymore, but I'm sure there are other programs that willl do the same things.

:):)

There is no "magic bullet".

You can't have top quality AND large size and compress it into a smaller file size.

Personally, if the OPs idea is small file sizes to EMAIL then why bother taking the photos at top resolution setting on the camera?

If you have say a 10 megapixel camera, set it to take 5 or 6 mega pixel photos.. You will cut your photo file size in half and for all intents and purposes most folks on the other end of the email will never notice the difference..

You can easily cut the photo resolution (on the camera) down to 2 megapixels and still have plenty of detail to print off a 8x10 photo without noticeable pixelation..

Alternatively, if the OP wants the folks to get supersized photos without going to the hassle of resizing them all then I would recommend simply signing up for a Google email address.. You get 15 GB of FREE GOOGLE DRIVE online storage space and you CAN easily SHARE those photos.

On Google drive you simply setup a SHARED folder, copy your photos to that folder. Then you generate a URL link to that folder.

You then EMAIL THE GOOGLE LINK to the folks you want to share the photos with.

They then can view and download the photos they want.

I didn't say or imply that you could have both large size and top quality. The OP wants to know how to reduce the file size of pictures so they're suitable for emailing, and I told him of a way that works for me.

I don't always know what I'm going to do with the pictures I take, so I typically use the highest quality setting on my camera. It's very easy (for me) to then reduce the size and quality of the pictures I want to email, or post on a trip report in the Truck Camper forum, to get a file size that's easier to email or upload to my image hosting site. I've done this for literally hundreds of pictures I've posted on the forum, and I still have the original high quality/full sized image for my use. I rarely ever bother printing a photo in any of the traditional small format sizes. When I have a picture I want printed, I usually want it BIG, and that's when I'm glad I have the full sized, high quality image to work with.

You apparently like your way, I like mine.

:):)

"Bigger" to start with is not "always" better.

Unless you are planning to view the photos 1 foot away from a billboard, anything over 2 mega pixels for general viewing is pretty much a waste.

When you manually "downsize" a photo you ARE throwing away ALL of that extra resolution you started with.

In other words you end up throwing out PIXELS in the process.

In reality you are doing the very same thing as setting the camera to a lower resolution.

There are some actual advantages to letting the camera do the sizing.. One of them is the camera is working with RAW data, this results in LESS ERRORS which results in less pixelization.

Downsizing a very lossy and highly compressed format such as a JPEG results in a lot of errors. If you understood how data compression works you would have an understanding of data errors that get worse when you compress, uncompress then recompress.

Data compression basically compares data, creates a "token" for common data then throws away the common data and inserts the token..

Errors in this process can and do happen and when they do you get pixelization. Editing software while it can resize the photo (IE throw out data) can introduce errors, cheap or free editing software can take good data and trash it.

As I mentioned before, a 2 megapixel photo gives you a 8x10 photo print, 1 mega pixel gives you a 4x6 photo print..

Just how big of a photo do you really want to look at is the question.. A billboard or a 22" computer screen?

Thanks for all the unnecessary details, but since it's apparently gone unnoticed by you, I wasn't asking for any guidance or approval of how to use a digital camera or how to handle digital images. My post was an attempt to help the OP, nothing more. If you disagree with it or have different ideas, try letting them stand on their own without quoting my post as if I'm doing something wrong, or (heaven forbid) WASTING PRECIOUS ONES AND ZEROS.

As I mentioned before, I'm happy with what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. So in other words, I don't care if you think it's good, bad, or wasteful.

:):)

[obgraham]

I use Pixresizer (freeware) to do what OP wants to do.

[CA_Traveler]

TenOC wrote:

toedtoes wrote:
For Web and "sharing with friends", I downsize to 72dpi and no more than 720pixels on the largest side.

Can you do this in a batch? What Software?

IrfanView

[toedtoes]

Gdetrailer wrote:

NRALIFR wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:

NRALIFR wrote:
You don't need to compress it any more. What you need is software that will reduce the image size (H x W) and quality, which in most cases will not noticeably affect the image for forum posting use. I believe Irfanview will do that, but to be honest I haven't really played with it much so I could be wrong. I have an old image editing program called Image Expert that has a very easy to use interface that allows you to choose four levels of image quality, and change the image size in pixels while maintaining the height to width aspect ratio. Doing that can have a dramatic effect on the file size, and still have an image suitable for emailing or forum posting.

Unfortunately, Image Expert isn't available anymore, but I'm sure there are other programs that willl do the same things.

:):)

There is no "magic bullet".

You can't have top quality AND large size and compress it into a smaller file size.

Personally, if the OPs idea is small file sizes to EMAIL then why bother taking the photos at top resolution setting on the camera?

If you have say a 10 megapixel camera, set it to take 5 or 6 mega pixel photos.. You will cut your photo file size in half and for all intents and purposes most folks on the other end of the email will never notice the difference..

You can easily cut the photo resolution (on the camera) down to 2 megapixels and still have plenty of detail to print off a 8x10 photo without noticeable pixelation..

Alternatively, if the OP wants the folks to get supersized photos without going to the hassle of resizing them all then I would recommend simply signing up for a Google email address.. You get 15 GB of FREE GOOGLE DRIVE online storage space and you CAN easily SHARE those photos.

On Google drive you simply setup a SHARED folder, copy your photos to that folder. Then you generate a URL link to that folder.

You then EMAIL THE GOOGLE LINK to the folks you want to share the photos with.

They then can view and download the photos they want.

I didn't say or imply that you could have both large size and top quality. The OP wants to know how to reduce the file size of pictures so they're suitable for emailing, and I told him of a way that works for me.

I don't always know what I'm going to do with the pictures I take, so I typically use the highest quality setting on my camera. It's very easy (for me) to then reduce the size and quality of the pictures I want to email, or post on a trip report in the Truck Camper forum, to get a file size that's easier to email or upload to my image hosting site. I've done this for literally hundreds of pictures I've posted on the forum, and I still have the original high quality/full sized image for my use. I rarely ever bother printing a photo in any of the traditional small format sizes. When I have a picture I want printed, I usually want it BIG, and that's when I'm glad I have the full sized, high quality image to work with.

You apparently like your way, I like mine.

:):)

"Bigger" to start with is not "always" better.

Unless you are planning to view the photos 1 foot away from a billboard, anything over 2 mega pixels for general viewing is pretty much a waste.

When you manually "downsize" a photo you ARE throwing away ALL of that extra resolution you started with.

In other words you end up throwing out PIXELS in the process.

In reality you are doing the very same thing as setting the camera to a lower resolution.

There are some actual advantages to letting the camera do the sizing.. One of them is the camera is working with RAW data, this results in LESS ERRORS which results in less pixelization.

Downsizing a very lossy and highly compressed format such as a JPEG results in a lot of errors. If you understood how data compression works you would have an understanding of data errors that get worse when you compress, uncompress then recompress.

Data compression basically compares data, creates a "token" for common data then throws away the common data and inserts the token..

Errors in this process can and do happen and when they do you get pixelization. Editing software while it can resize the photo (IE throw out data) can introduce errors, cheap or free editing software can take good data and trash it.

As I mentioned before, a 2 megapixel photo gives you a 8x10 photo print, 1 mega pixel gives you a 4x6 photo print..

Just how big of a photo do you really want to look at is the question.. A billboard or a 22" computer screen?

If all you're doing is looking at photos on a computer screen, then
yes, larger sized images are a waste. However, locking yourself
to a smaller size by default means you don't have any options for doing anything more with the image.

[toedtoes]

TenOC wrote:

toedtoes wrote:
For Web and "sharing with friends", I downsize to 72dpi and no more than 720pixels on the largest side.

Can you do this in a batch? What Software?

I do it manually one by one normally as I only share the best of my images. I use Photoshop and Lightroom. Lightroom allows you to batch process. However, it's not a free program and unless you want to do more than just resize, it's not worth the cost.

[Gdetrailer]

NRALIFR wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:

NRALIFR wrote:
You don't need to compress it any more. What you need is software that will reduce the image size (H x W) and quality, which in most cases will not noticeably affect the image for forum posting use. I believe Irfanview will do that, but to be honest I haven't really played with it much so I could be wrong. I have an old image editing program called Image Expert that has a very easy to use interface that allows you to choose four levels of image quality, and change the image size in pixels while maintaining the height to width aspect ratio. Doing that can have a dramatic effect on the file size, and still have an image suitable for emailing or forum posting.

Unfortunately, Image Expert isn't available anymore, but I'm sure there are other programs that willl do the same things.

:):)

There is no "magic bullet".

You can't have top quality AND large size and compress it into a smaller file size.

Personally, if the OPs idea is small file sizes to EMAIL then why bother taking the photos at top resolution setting on the camera?

If you have say a 10 megapixel camera, set it to take 5 or 6 mega pixel photos.. You will cut your photo file size in half and for all intents and purposes most folks on the other end of the email will never notice the difference..

You can easily cut the photo resolution (on the camera) down to 2 megapixels and still have plenty of detail to print off a 8x10 photo without noticeable pixelation..

Alternatively, if the OP wants the folks to get supersized photos without going to the hassle of resizing them all then I would recommend simply signing up for a Google email address.. You get 15 GB of FREE GOOGLE DRIVE online storage space and you CAN easily SHARE those photos.

On Google drive you simply setup a SHARED folder, copy your photos to that folder. Then you generate a URL link to that folder.

You then EMAIL THE GOOGLE LINK to the folks you want to share the photos with.

They then can view and download the photos they want.

I didn't say or imply that you could have both large size and top quality. The OP wants to know how to reduce the file size of pictures so they're suitable for emailing, and I told him of a way that works for me.

I don't always know what I'm going to do with the pictures I take, so I typically use the highest quality setting on my camera. It's very easy (for me) to then reduce the size and quality of the pictures I want to email, or post on a trip report in the Truck Camper forum, to get a file size that's easier to email or upload to my image hosting site. I've done this for literally hundreds of pictures I've posted on the forum, and I still have the original high quality/full sized image for my use. I rarely ever bother printing a photo in any of the traditional small format sizes. When I have a picture I want printed, I usually want it BIG, and that's when I'm glad I have the full sized, high quality image to work with.

You apparently like your way, I like mine.

:):)

"Bigger" to start with is not "always" better.

Unless you are planning to view the photos 1 foot away from a billboard, anything over 2 mega pixels for general viewing is pretty much a waste.

When you manually "downsize" a photo you ARE throwing away ALL of that extra resolution you started with.

In other words you end up throwing out PIXELS in the process.

In reality you are doing the very same thing as setting the camera to a lower resolution.

There are some actual advantages to letting the camera do the sizing.. One of them is the camera is working with RAW data, this results in LESS ERRORS which results in less pixelization.

Downsizing a very lossy and highly compressed format such as a JPEG results in a lot of errors. If you understood how data compression works you would have an understanding of data errors that get worse when you compress, uncompress then recompress.

Data compression basically compares data, creates a "token" for common data then throws away the common data and inserts the token..

Errors in this process can and do happen and when they do you get pixelization. Editing software while it can resize the photo (IE throw out data) can introduce errors, cheap or free editing software can take good data and trash it.

As I mentioned before, a 2 megapixel photo gives you a 8x10 photo print, 1 mega pixel gives you a 4x6 photo print..

Just how big of a photo do you really want to look at is the question.. A billboard or a 22" computer screen?