Reducing an image for an avatar, into the single digit k's
Reducing an image for an avatar, into the single digit k'sOriginally Posted by Maxico
Yes, if you can believe that, Photoshop IS crappy at making things really small. Here's what nobody else is telling you: you need to use a lower grade photo software after your main prep work in Photoshop.
So you go into Adobe PS and you crop, and set you pixel dimensions usually 80X80 or 64X64), and your dpi (72), and then you save as a PS .jpg with good quality. Actually next time I'm gonna try max quality.
The avatar I'm using here on Eyes On was a 72k .jpg sized 80X80 pixel, saved out of PS at good quality, I think #8 jpg compression. (I am using Photoshop CS3 v10 on Mac OS X)
NOTHING I did in Photoshop could get that image anywhere near single digit k's, including lowest quality compression settings, stripping out all color profile info, preview and thumbnail data, changing to indexed color - doesn't even come close. As a matter of fact, going to 256 local web palette colors with no dithering made it even bigger. Ha!
I have 11 yrs career experience in digital imaging and this was making me a little crazy too. Definitely scratching my head wondering WHAT was going on.
Here's the zaniness of it - I bring it into Preview (default Max OS X image viewer) and save it at MAX quality (yes, that's right, I slid the quality slider UPWARD from the default "good") and it saves out as 8k.
So you are right! Photoshop is crappy at reducing.
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