Wednesday, January 12, 2011

I am cheap. Or, how I resize photos for the web.

Did you know Blogger has a maximum photo album storage size?  And after you fill it up you have to PAY FOR more storage?  OK, I've heard rumors that maybe it's only like $5 bucks a year, but I'm cheap, and I'd much rather spend that on a decaf tall vanilla non-fat latte.  : )

Here's how I plan on making my free storage last a very long time:

First off, I edit my photo until I'm happy with it, or until I'm happy with it for today (am I the only one who goes back and re-edits photos weeks or months later?).  Then I save a full size copy of it in my pictures.  I keep my photos named by the date they were taken and organized in a folder by year.  You may have a better way...

So, anyway, click "save as":


I choose to save mine "in a version set with the original".  This keeps your original (unedited version) and your new version stacked on top of each other in the photoshop elements organizer.  It adds "_edited-xx" to the name of the photo.


I save it at its maximum size, that way I can always go back and print a poster sized photo if I wanted to.  : )


OK, so now I have my "good" copy of my edited photo, all safe in my archives.  Next I put my watermark on the photo (my daughter, Grace, taught me how to create a watermark brush!).

Then I click "Save for Web":


The following screen pops up.
I change the "preset" to "JPEG Low", and I change the largest sized side to 800 pixels, making sure that "constrain proportions" is checked off.


This changed the size of my photo from 1.23M to 20.4K.  I have NO idea what that means, but it sounds like a LOT.  I save this copy on my desktop, because really I only need it long enough to upload to blogger.  (Remember, I have my full sized, not watermarked, "good" copy, safe in my pictures folder).

Oh, and I almost forgot, another HUGE plus?  It takes mere seconds to upload these smaller photos to blogger, rather than MINUTES.  I don't know about you, but MINUTES is way too long.  What are YOU going to do with all your new free time now?  I mean since you're not waiting for blogger to upload?

xoxo
rachel

8 comments:

  1. you can also upload your pics to flickr and use the html code to post your pics! i do that a lot to save my blogger space!

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  2. Good advice. I think I put a too big pic on. Last year I had troubles with Picassa wanting a fee for storing my pictures. I didn't even sanction Picassa to do that. I thought I was adding my pictures to the blog from my own files. So, I dumped Picassa and promply lost all my pictures from the blog. It was very disheartening. Could you shou how to make a watermark please.

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  3. I downsize mine too before uploading. Saves space plus, I don't want anyone downloading a true size image of mine. Mine are typically 600px in the widest direction and at 72px resolution.

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  4. Did you also know that when you upload a photo to Blogger it's added to your picasa account. Once the folder fills up, make a new one! :-D You'll eventually run out of space on any album though!

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  5. Jaymi--but doesn't flickr charge for more than just a few uploads a month?

    and Amy--isn't the blogger/picasa maximum per account, not per album?

    and Gardening--yeah, it's actually picasa that stores your blogger photos. so if you delete your picasa album, poof...your blogger photos are gone. sorry about that!

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  6. That's a pretty good way of doing it. I just purchased a Flickr account. For $25 a year, I have unlimited uploads and I can create private folders with full size files as a sorta backup for myself.

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  7. I splurged and went with a Flickr account too. It's been SO nice to have. I created an action to resize my photos.

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  8. This is good to know. I need to get more organized and I need to stop wasting space.

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