Lightroom --> SmugMug file sizes

[stoogest]

Hi all,

I hope this is the right forum section for this question...

I've recently signed up for a smugmug account and intend to use it to store the images that I will be submitting for competitions on AP.

I use Lightroom to do 99% of my PPing. I have installed the SmugMug plugin for Lightroom and it's working fine for uploading photos.

But...one of the limitations when linking from AP to SmugMug is that the filesize can be max 350kB. When you do an export from Lightroom you can adjust the 'Quality' slider between 0 and 100 to reduce filesize, but I can't find a way of telling what an adjustment of '50' (for example) actually does to the resultant file size. If it was only one image I would simply do the export and check its size at the destination, however when I plan to be uploading 50 images at a time I would like to know that none of the images will exceed 350kB. Is there any way of chekcing/doing this with Lightroom??

Alternatively, is there a way of limiting filesize when linking to SmugMug (from AP)?

Alternatively again, am I better off using CS3 (and if so, how)?

Any help is appreciated!

Andrew.

[ricktas]

The 350KB limit ONLY applies to competition entries, not other threads. We put this limit in place for the competitions as members were linking files of 1MB and more and the competition threads with generally over 50 entries were taking ages to load (esp for those on slower connections) and people were not voting cause of the time taken to load the thread.

[I @ M]

Andrew, I haven't used Lightroom but from the sounds of things it uses a scale similar to Nikon Capture NX when resizing. Photoshop has a "better" system that shows you the size as you go but a bit of experimentation will save you $$ in the long run

Going on files that I have resized / saved from the D50 ( same sensor basically as the D40 ), if you size them to around the 1024 px on the longest side and about the "70 - 80" quality mark you should fall into a good balance between compression and quality.

Try a few experiments with photos with minimal adjustments and then lots of alteration to see the sizes they end up before you actually upload any.

[kiwi]

Get lr/mogrify too re export. It does a better job. I concur with the 80% quality 1024mp export size. In almost all files you will get file size between 170k and 240k

[stoogest]

Thanks guys. I'll have a bit of an experiment.

I've got a feeling that when doing some processing (such as applying a gradient filter) it can significantly increase the file size, and so I may need to reduce down to 30-40 in those instances.

[kiwi]

It really should not matter what size the psd file is, ie how many layers etc

[etherial]

Alternatively, is there a way of limiting filesize when linking to SmugMug (from AP)?


I'm not quite sure how it does it or how it decides, but smugmug automatically resizes your images when you link to them. All of my images on smugmug are 3-6MB in size but if I grab a link (XL size which is 1024pixels) and link it into a post it will show in the post a maybe 200kB. It seems to know what is a reasonable size for what is displayed and do it's own resize.

Someone else with more experience here might be able to elaborate, but thats what I have observed. Try some tests in the testzone.

[stoogest]

That would be even better. I'll give it a shot.

[stoogest]

Did some testing here: http://www.ausphotography.net.au/forum/showthread.php?p=401616#post401616

The original i uploaded to smugmug was 3.4MB, but it seems etherial is right and that it does a resizing when you link from AP. A right click 'properties' shows that a 1024 version of the image is about 340kB.

I reckon this is the simplest method. I'll just need to do a preview on my competition entries just to be sure it hasn't crept over the 350kB mark.

Thanks for the tip etherial!

Andrew.