Compression of massive files

raathistle

raathistle

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Chris
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Afternoon chaps and chapesses.

My brother is a design graduate and as an alternative portfolio has produced a massive (!) image banner showing his skills and projects (uni and commercial) he has worked on. This he has got printed and sent out to a few employers.

One however doesn't accept paper applications and has asked for the image file instead, the problem is its ~120mb and is obviously way too big to email. They don't seem too keen on a CD submission either so is there any way he can compress the file without getting quality loss?

I have some webspace he can host it on for them to download but would like to get it as small as possible

Suggestions and tips very gratefully accepted, plus you may even get a shiny penny in return :D

Chris
 
I think its a jpeg, although he stores it as a TIFF

by massive I mean probably 200*60 cm @ 300dpi, full colour with fine detail throughout the image
 
I'm guessing he doesn't want to degrade the quality too much then?
Has he tried zipping it up? Use 7Zip rather than using the default windows "Compress" action though, which is slow and clunky.
 
Zipping an image file will never be as efficient as using a dedicated image compression algorithm such as JPEG or GIF. You might shrink a TIFF file a bit by zipping it mind.

GIF (LZW) is excellent at compression blocks of solid colour (particularly horizontal stripes), but is useless for anything with lots of fine detail (a tree).

JPEG is definitely the best bet. Experiment with different quality settings. You should be able to shrink it to an acceptable size.

If they are only taking electronic submission then it stands to reason they will be viewing it on a monitor. You may be able to reduce the file size a fair bit simply by resizing to the height of a good hires wide-screen monitor.
 
There are plenty of free large file transfer sites out there.

Do a google on "emailing large files free".
 
cheers guys.

turns out its a 120mb jpeg, which is mental

Any tips for how to do it that don't involve the people going on the internet as apparently they aren't able to access the general interweb. TBH the people he is corresponding with sound like complete tools who don't know anything about computers, but thats what you get when you talk to hr people (apologies if you are one, I don't mean it really)

Cheers

Chris
 
Two choices then.

1) Resize the image to sensible screen size rather than print
2) Lower the JPEG quality

You're not going to be able to compress an image any better than jpeg really
 
So they don't want it on paper, they don't want it on CD and they won't go on the internet to look at it?

120MB for a jpg is huge though - if it were me I would do as suggested above, shrink to a more appropriate screen size - say a max vertical res of 1200, not many places will be running 2560x1600 screens and if using photoshop, save at a quality of about 10 out of the 12.

Should still be more than adequate frankly and i'd be surprised if it came out much bigger than 10MB when you do that.
 
So they don't want it on paper, they don't want it on CD and they won't go on the internet to look at it?
Click to expand...
:shrug:

Don't see what options you DO have really. Pictures generally do not compress in size whatever you do.. Winzip, Winrar, Gzip.. etc etc..

You could try using or converting to .pdf - I used to use this at work (redundant now- :shake:) for large roll drawings CAD drawings...

Get yourself an AdobePDF printer installed or some other PDF printer (Bullzip). Open your pic up in the usual software - That is if it doesn't crash the PC when you do :LOL:

Then simply print to the virtual printer, may have to do some playing around with the settings, but it shuld give you a reasonable quality doc and after all thats what PDF is for... Portable Document Format, PLUS it should drastically reduce your filesize.

I really can't say what the end product will be like, even in my last job I didn't ever convert one that large!

Forgot to mention if you Adobe Acrobat (Most Pro versions) If I remember correctly you can "create PDF from file" in the file menu.. That should do it too.

Good Luck! (y)
 
Providing the recipient is prepared to download a 120mb file why not use mailbigfile.com, the free version allows you to send a file upto 200mb in size, you simply enter the recipients e-mail address, attach the file on your PC, it uploads it from your PC and then they send the recipient an e-mail giving them a link to download the file. Used it quite a few time, never had a problem

Tim
 
Good call Xendistar.. :clap:

And well noted by myself!... (y)
 
Why not re-size it for display on screen, that should reduce the size and dimensions considerably - a 6mb photo can look good as a 200kb jpg on the forums after all so using the same ratio it would shrink to 4mb ish...
 
jcoutts said:
:shrug:

Don't see what options you DO have really. Pictures generally do not compress in size whatever you do.. Winzip, Winrar, Gzip.. etc etc..

You could try using or converting to .pdf - I used to use this at work (redundant now- :shake:) for large roll drawings CAD drawings...

Get yourself an AdobePDF printer installed or some other PDF printer (Bullzip). Open your pic up in the usual software - That is if it doesn't crash the PC when you do :LOL:

Then simply print to the virtual printer, may have to do some playing around with the settings, but it shuld give you a reasonable quality doc and after all thats what PDF is for... Portable Document Format, PLUS it should drastically reduce your filesize.

I really can't say what the end product will be like, even in my last job I didn't ever convert one that large!

Forgot to mention if you Adobe Acrobat (Most Pro versions) If I remember correctly you can "create PDF from file" in the file menu.. That should do it too.

Good Luck! (y)
Click to expand...

PDF just uses JPEG compression for images....so you're better off doing the JPEG conversion yourself and maintaining control of the settings :)
 
raathistle said:
I think its a jpeg, although he stores it as a TIFF

by massive I mean probably 200*60 cm @ 300dpi, full colour with fine detail throughout the image
Click to expand...

That's about 23,000 pixels wide, great for print, pointless for screen/web use. It needs re-sizing.
 
Depending on how ballsy your brother is, he could explain he is not prepared to degrade the quality of his work simply to meet the restrictive conditions and tell them they will either have to accept it on disc or do without it.

Might work in is favour.

(Might get his application stuck in the bin too though mind!)
 
Simmotino said:
Depending on how ballsy your brother is, he could explain he is not prepared to degrade the quality of his work simply to meet the restrictive conditions and tell them they will either have to accept it on disc or do without it.

Might work in is favour.

(Might get his application stuck in the bin too though mind!)
Click to expand...

Anyone ever did anything like that when applying for a position I was hiring for, I'd do more than just bin the application, I'd write back and tell them they have an attitude problem.
 
Simple answer is to resize it, it doesn't need to be this big when only viewing on screen. I would first off reduce it to 72ppi and see how big the file comes out. I'd then reduce the size of the image to a more acceptable size for viewing on screen. I'm sure you'll be able to get a good quality version weighing it at less than 10mb.
 
Cheers for the help

I think he is just going to go down the road of not being able to send this to them and produce an alternative for them which is a shame, it's an excellent thing when you look at it

Resizing it isn't an option I'm afraid, its a lot of fine drawing which if you resize down to 1200 wide is about 5% of the size, thats like resizing a 12megapixel photo to 200x150, you would see nothing
 
I do wonder why something 2 meters wide was produced at 300dpi in the first place, that level of detail is lost when you consider the viewing distance needed :thinking:
 
I'm not explaining it very well, but essentially it is not intended to be viewed as a full 2m wide thing hung on a wall, it is a single 2m wide strip of paper with fine detailed drawings on.

Imagine a large blueprint of a shopping centre, it is big because there is a lot of information on it, it is high res because the detail is fine, same for this.

Alternatively something like the bayeaux tapestry, its long and detailed and if you shrink it to view the whole thing on a monitor it would look carp
 
I still think the quality would be more than acceptable at 72ppi and would reduce the size of the file by quite a lot. I really can't see the reason for it to be 300ppi for on screen viewing.
 
Don't confuse 1200 wide with 1200 tall.

Currently the image is 23600x7000. That's insanely big.

Resize it to say 2000 pixels tall (6700X2000 should retain plenty of detail for example). and the size will reduce massively as you're going from 165MP to just over 13MP.

Another idea is to do that, reduce it to say 1200 pixels tall and have some 'full size' insets within the image or attached to the underneath.

Something like this for example:

ferrariwheel.jpg
 
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