How To Reduce Image Size Without Losing Image Quality in Photoshop

Or : Why are my photoshop jpgs so ridiculously huge!?!

Straight out of the gate using photoshop you’ll notice one thing: Saving JPG files in photoshop are HUGE. Waste of space. Frustratingly bloated, and for no seeming purpose. In fact, when it comes to saving and exporting small jpg files and compressing files for web… its a very confusing reality that the world’s most popular photo editing software is so… Terrible

Don’t worry – This post isn’t just a rant on the inefficiencies of photoshop. We actually have a helpful solution – Watch below to learn how to reduce image file size in photoshop, the easy way!

[powerkit_collapsibles ]
[powerkit_collapsible title=”Video Transcript”]
(This transcript is Auto Generated, and will likely contain vocabulary errors!)

hey guys Ryan here and signature edits
and I just wanted to show you a really
quick tip for saving smaller file sizes
inside of Photoshop
[Music]
this really helped me a lot ironically
it was while I was making a print to
pixels conversion chart here which you
can actually download in signature
Etta’s com
but my problem was when I hit command
save and I go to jpg let’s say this as
test JPEG okay the problem is even
though it’s only 1200 pixels high by
like 500 wide we’re coming up at 2.6
megabytes
now if I take that and I save it and I
go over and I convert it on something
like opt is illah which is a great
option if your batch trying to compress
files and make the file size is smaller
we go and let’s grab our test JPEG and
we can see it uploads and compressing 93
percent smaller we can make it 93
percent smaller just by using options
illa now that’s kind of annoying that
Photoshop doesn’t at least get me most
of the way there I’m okay with them not
being perfect but why the heck is this
so much smaller and we’ve still got
great quality well I’m saving the wrong
way it turns out there’s a old command
that we’ve actually got in here called
file export save for web now it’s a
legacy save option but they’ve kept it
in there because people use it so often
how do you use this well you just click
it and we select our preset we can go
JPEG high quality low quality medium I
went with medium because it seems to
work very well
and then you can see our image pixels
they’re exactly the same as my previous
settings I’m just gonna hit save and
we’re gonna call it just jpg too now
let’s take a look at this we’ve gone
from two megabytes down to 92 kilobytes
and for web you’re never gonna notice
the difference so that’s how you can
save images from Photoshop for web and
make them about 90% smaller I hope this
was helpful for you if it was please hit
that like button don’t forget to
subscribe and I’ll see you in the next
one take care
[Music]
[/powerkit_collapsible]
[powerkit_collapsible title=””]
[/powerkit_collapsibles]

It turns out that photoshop values image quality over file size efficiency. While on the one hand this makes a lot of sense for photographers and graphic designers who want the best possible results, it can be a little absurd when you set the photoshop quality slider to “low” and your file size is still 10X larger than it should be!

Point in case – This image here is 1920×1080 pixels, and photoshop is saving the jpg out at 2.7mb.

But when we slide our quality all the way to medium – Photoshop is still saving the jpg out at a whopping 2.5mb! But it gets better….

Now we try to take it ALL the way down to 1/10 for quality… And STILL 2.5mb! What gives?!

But… Maybe that image just has to be that big or the quality would suck?

No, unfortunately its just photoshop being absurd. If we take our image and compress it using optizilla.com, look how far down it takes our file sizes!

BAM! 94% Smaller – And the quality is STILL awesome! Optizilla is a great tool, especially for batch image compressing. But wouldn’t it be great if photoshop exported my files for web ALREADY?!

So Why Is Photoshop Exporting My JPGs SO flipping BIG?!

Well to be honest, we don’t know why photoshop is so dumb at saving images and why jpgs in photoshop are so much bigger than they need to be. BUT there is another far more effective option. Its hidden in your export settings, and its called Save To Web (Legacy). Its labelled legacy because its technically from an older version of photoshop, but they’ve kept it in there because it was so popular for photographers and people wanting to get smaller web size images from photoshop. Lets give that a try!

Okay.. Now lets compare our old image and our new one! Thats 95% smaller!

Now you’re probably thinking… Sure it makes it smaller, but what about the quality loss? The new image probably looks blurry and crappy…

You’d be surprised! Sure, when you zoom WAAAAY in you can see a SMALL reduction in sharpness and detail… With over 60% of web traffic being viewed on a MOBILE PHONE… In reality, you’ll never see the difference.

And Thats How To Reduce Image Size Without Losing Image Quality in Photoshop!