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I wanted to know what the best way to save a JPG to be very small and still keep its quality as much as possible. I have 1200x1200 psd files that when I save them while keeping quality the jpg is around 500kb. I used to save them as JPG 10 which is maximum and changed it to 5 that is medium, I think anything less than that and the quality is bad. Is there any third party software that shrinks? Preferably as a Photoshop plugin like JPEGmini Pro and tinyPNG promise they do, script or action or any other Photoshop method to shrink it?

to be more clear about the psd file i have a background layer, layer with a carpet, and watermark layer.

this image needs to go to a website - an online store.

maybe i should be using PNG instead of JPG?

example to one of my psd files here

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  • PNG will create a larger file size than JPEG - especially when used with quite large photographic images, so that's definitely not what you need. Take the advice given you by @Daniello
    – Billy Kerr
    Jun 22, 2018 at 11:30
  • If your images are not compressing well, see if they are not on cmyk. Cmyk files does not compress well and should not be used for a website.
    – Rafael
    Jun 22, 2018 at 14:14
  • i just checked, i have RGB, and 8 bits/channel
    – AG9
    Jun 22, 2018 at 16:27

2 Answers 2

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Amount of compression and quality loss in JPEG is all a matter of the source image complexity and our individual tolerance to artifacts.

This can be illustrated with the following different quality levels of JPEG compression of a 2k pixel sized image:

95% (4:4:4 high quality): 1.8 MB size

enter image description here
Source

10% (4:4:4 high quality smoothing): 88 kB

enter image description here

1% (4:2:0 low quality smoothing): 32 kB

enter image description here

We can see that we can reduce the size of this non-destructively compressed photo from 5 MB down to 33 kB with highly compressed JPEG format. A compression down to 88 kB still is fairly tolerable in this case. These levels of compression as well as the amount of artifacts will be much fewer in images with large flat spaces or geometrical content.

To find the optimum amount of compression for our needs there is not much else we can do than experimenting with different compression levels and visually comparing the outcome.

Sometimes just a noise reduction prior to compression can dramatically decrease the size of a JPEG file without introducing much artifacts.

There are other compression algorithms that do better but these may not be accessible to a wide range of users.

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Using Save for web and devices is better than Save as... for JPG.

flowers

This image is saved with this parameters:

parameters

This is the final size:

Save for web

This is JPG2000:

JOG200

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  • Tiny detail, but wouldn't the new Export As.. be better than the legacy Save for Web... It will also trim exif data. These days I tend to only use save for web if I specifically want to keep the original exif intact. [Hard to test on SE images because imgur trims the exif itself].
    – Tetsujin
    Jun 22, 2018 at 8:51
  • JPG 2000 is not an option? I've got 82 KB with a good image quality.
    – user120647
    Jun 22, 2018 at 9:46
  • what is JPG 2000 ?
    – AG9
    Jun 22, 2018 at 11:04
  • caniuse.com/#feat=jpeg2000
    – user120647
    Jun 22, 2018 at 11:18
  • 3
    Do not use JPG 2000, you are just using it for a website. Belive me, you are not the first person putting good looking photos on a website with small file size. Just use JPG.
    – Rafael
    Jun 22, 2018 at 14:12

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