Be Excellent To Each Other

Hullo.

I've just got a 30 day trial of Photoshop Elements, and in many things I am finding it excellent. However, my brain appears to have frozen entirely when it comes to the best way to save image files for web use, desktop viewing with Picasa Gallery and originals.

Essentially what I want to do is save pics for Flickr.com (Free not Pro). This is confusing as I still haven't quite worked out a fast and simple way of resizing to a web-happy resolution and quality. What settings do you use? How big a file do you think is acceptable? How big do you resize? What the fuck do you click on?

Another head scratcher is that I like to use Picasa to organise and so on, but it hates the JPF format that is Element's JPEG saving format and refuses to recognise it. But t'web seems to only like jpegs.

Finally I'll have to work out what the best way of sizing and saving is for prints.

I'm sure that I can work all this out eventually myself and that I'm just exhausted from late nights and unusual amounts of exercise, but I'd like to know what you do with your pics and how you store them. I really need an external hard drive I guess, as mine is less than 80gigs. Trouble is house moving, weddings and fests nix that for now. Bah.

Flickr resizes the images for you..? If you get the Flickr uploader it resizes them before it uploads tham.

Really? I must have been doing it wrong, because mine came out online at 4 megs. Ooops.

Ah right - it will keep the original size unless you tell it to (good for pro users, not so much for you with your limited uploads). Grab the Flickr Uploader, go to Tools | Preferences and change the upload size.

For those running XP, I always recommend the Image Resizer powertoy from Microsoft. 521kb and allows you right-click a load of files and resize them to certain resolutions in one go.

I second this. It's a lovely little thing.

Oooh! Thank you!

This'll be great. I shoot everything in RAW in case I stumble across something splendid, but a fair few are snapshots that are jpeg fodder to simply remind me of happy times, rather than be art. I was dreading clumsily converting lots of things. This'll be very handy, ta.

I'm also downloading the RAW thumbnail viewer, that should make things easier. Phew.

RAW? Then you probably want this powertoy too: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

I presume Elements is almost the same as Photoshop. In which case:

Image -> Image Size... -> Key in your dimensions (<= 500 width for forums, I do) -> OK

Then I'll usually do a quick Unsharp Mask, seeing as resizing reduces quality and sharpness somewhat. The name is confusing, but don't worry about it.

Filter -> Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask... -> Fiddle about here. I usually do 40%, 1px, 0 as my subtle settings, which seem to do in most cases -> OK

Then save it for the web, probably as a jpg, but it depends on the file. Photos I'll do as jpg.

File -> Save for web & devices... -> Fiddle with the settings for whichever format you choose. Lower the quality until you start to notice the negative effects, then increase it a touch. Check the file size in the bottom left -> Save

Heh, I just beat you to it. Ta for the tip, though!