Why are my digital photograph files so huge while photos on other Web sites are much smaller?

If you are designing a Web site, sending digital photographs as e-mail attachments or trying to pack as many images on a floppy disk as possible, the size of each image is important. What you want to do is shrink the file size to as few bytes as possible without hurting the image quality. Most Web sites that publish photographs use the JPEG (pronounced !ay-peg " format for their images. #$%& is a popular format for two reasons' (. It has good compression characteristics on photographic data. ). It lets you ad!ust the amount of compression. *ites like ++,i and ,--.com ad!ust the compression ratio to shrink the file size. Most image-handling programs let you tweak the #$%& compression ratio in one way or another. .or e/ample, $aint *hop $ro lets you ad!ust the compression ratio on a scale from ( to 00, with ( offering the best image quality and lowest compression ratio and 00 offering the lowest quality and highest compression. 1he following images gi2e you some sense of the effect that different compression ratios can ha2e on image quality. In all cases, I started with the same 344/556-pi/el image. 1he original #$%& image at (-percent compression (ma/imum quality" takes up (7) kilobytes of disk space, so it is not e2en included. +esides, there is no difference between (-percent compression and )4-percent compression in terms of image quality, e2en though the size of the file goes down by a factor of four8

JPEG format, 400x

! pixels, "0# compression, $ %ilobytes

JPEG format, 400x

! pixels, 40# compression, "& %ilobytes

JPEG format, 400x

! pixels, !0# compression, '( %ilobytes

JPEG format, 400x

! pixels, )0# compression, '" %ilobytes

JPEG format, 400x

! pixels, (0# compression, $ %ilobytes

JPEG format, 400x

! pixels, (&# compression, 4 %ilobytes

When I look at this particular image, I can begin to see minor degradation at 64-percent compression (most 2isible on the border of the blue shirt". %ighty-percent and 04-percent compression is progressi2ely worse, and 07-percent compression is badly pi/elated. .ortyor 74-percent compression is probably a good 2alue for this image, with an image size of )4 to )7 kilobytes. 9nother way to lower the size of the file is to reduce the image si*e. .or e/ample, here:s the same image in a )44/(6; format'

JPEG format, "00x'!) pixels, JPEG format, "00x'!) pixels, 40# compression, '" %ilobytes !0# compression, ( %ilobytes

1his smaller image size reduces the file size by a factor of two8 If your scanner is creating (44-kilobyte files, then your scanner is probably producing images in an uncompressed or slightly compressed #$%& format. <sing a program like $aint *hop $ro, you can open the image and re-sa2e it at a different compression ratio to shrink the file size significantly.