Saving Your Images

If you've spent a long time correcting your photos in PhotoPlus, or you've created some fantastic graphic art, you'll want to be able save it and share it with others! This tutorial shows you exactly how to achieve this.

• Save your work as a PhotoPlus project file.

• Create a high quality JPG.

• Export a copy of your work to various image formats.

• Resample your work on export to meet various output size requirements.

Let's begin...

Depending on the type of project you've been working on, there are several options open to you when you come to save, either saving as a PhotoPlus project file, overwriting your original image*, or exporting to a new image. We'll look at these in detail now.

• Hopefully, before you start working on your files, you'll have copied the original images to somewhere safe. This way you'll always have a set of "digital negatives" or untouched files that you can return to.

• *We really don't recommend overwriting the original file unless you are 100% confident that you will not want to make changes in the future.

Saving as a PhotoPlus project file

To save your work as a new PhotoPlus project:

1. On the File menu, click Save As...

2. If you have no layers, paths or masks, select PhotoPlus Pictures (*.spp) in the Save as Type drop-down menu, type a name for your file and click Save.
   
   - or -
   
   If you've already added any layers, paths or masks, you will see a new dialog asking you to save as a PhotoPlus picture. Click OK and then type a name for your file and click Save.

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Creating a high quality JPG

When you've completely finished editing your photo (be it JPG or a raw photo in Raw Studio), one of the best ways to save your changes is to "export" or create an entirely new copy of the image. This way, you can leave your original file intact. The best format to use in this case is a high quality JPEG.

• For more information regarding raw and JPG files, see the tutorial Raw or JPEG.

 To export an image to a high quality JPG:

1. On the File menu, select Export Optimizer....

2. In the Export Optimizer dialog:

• Set the Format to JPG.

• Set the Quality to 95% (recommended*).
  
  

• Click Export.

3. In the Export dialog, type a name for your file and click OK.
   
   Your JPEG image is saved to the location you specified and ready to print and share!
   
   

4. *When you are working with a photo that has not been edited before, reducing the quality of a JPEG to 95% can result in a file size that is half the size of a JPEG exported at 100%! The loss in image quality due to compression is undetectable to the human eye.

5. If you've been working on an existing photo (raw or JPG), any Exif information stored within the original photo is automatically added to the exported file.

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File size and image quality

It is possible to reduce the file size of image files (for download or websites) by changing the JPG quality settings. One thing to remember is that as JPG compression is lossy, i.e., it "throws away data", the image quickly begins to degrade, especially at lower settings.

You can preview the effect that different file formats, and changing the quality settings, has on your image and file size in the Export Optimizer dialog. We'll use the image of the bird to see this in action.

 To preview image export quality:

1. On the File menu, select Export Optimizer...
   
   The Export Optimizer dialog opens, displaying your image along with the estimated exported file size at the selected quality settings.

2. Click  Zoom In to zoom into your image.

3. Experiment with different types of output file and quality settings to see the effect that they have on your image's appearance and file size.

4. Once you have decided on an output type and/or quality, click Export. Alternatively, click Cancel to return to the main workspace.

If you look at the images below, you can see the effect that changing the export quality has on the image. All examples are zoomed in to 400%. The original 12MP photo JPG (4288 x 2848) had a file size of 4.1MB before we cropped the photo to 3083 x 2358 pixels and added a few adjustment layers.

• For certain images, especially graphics or drawings, you should export to the PNG (Portable Network Graphic) format. Although this is not ideal for photos as it produces very large files, it produces very small files when the image has crisp lines, text and relatively few continuous tones. Unlike JPG, it also supports an alpha (transparent) channel. The format is also lossless, meaning that there is no degradation in quality no matter how many times you edit and re-save the file.

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Resampling an image on export

Most photos taken straight from the camera have dimensions much bigger than the average monitor display. This means that we can reduce the file size by resizing the image to fit the screen. Also, as the resolution doesn’t need to be as high for a screen image, it means that we can further reduce file size by exporting the image as a lower quality JPEG, without affecting the appearance too much. We can do all of this in one step with the Export Optimizer. Let’s do that now.

The photo we are using is a 12 MP image taken from the 2011 Isle of Man TT. The image measures 4288 x 2848 pix and has a file size of 5.94MB. We are going to resample it ready for uploading to our website.

• It is also beneficial to upload a smaller version of your image to your web page if you are worried about someone "stealing" it. If you resize the image to 800x600, while it will look ok on screen, it won't be any good for printing.
  
  If you are creating images as desktop wallpaper, why not resample them to the specific desktop resolution that they are intended for?

To resize an image with the Export Optimizer:

1. On the File menu, click Export Optimizer...
   
   The dialog displays your image along with the estimated exported file size at the selected quality settings.
   
   
   
   We’ll set the size of the image first.

2. In the Size section:

• Ensure that the Maintain aspect ratio option is checked.

• In the Quality dropdown, select Lanczos 3 Window.

• Set the Height to 800 Pixels and click Apply. (The Width updates automatically.)
  
  
  
  Notice that the estimated file size has decreased dramatically. In our example, the file size has gone from 6187.55K (approximately 6.1MB) down to just over 360K (0.36MB)!

• Optional: If we reduced the JPEG quality setting to 95%, that file size drops to 166.96K (0.16MB), yet there's hardly any difference in visual quality!

• To complete the export, click Export, type a name for your file and click Save.
  
  Your image is saved to the chosen folder and is ready to be uploaded to your website or sent via email. (The original remains unchanged.)

• If you want to increase the dimensions of your photo, you may want to do this using the Image Size dialog from the Image menu. This way you'll be able to apply any necessary sharpening before you export the file.

• Thumbnails
  
  Thumbnails are smaller versions of the same picture. They are very small, in both file size and viewing size, and are often used on websites to link to the larger, high quality version of the image. The small file size means that even a page containing many thumbnails will load very quickly in a browser. The example below is a 150 x 99 pixel thumbnail created from our original image with the Export Optimizer. The file size is only 10.4K!
  

• For more information on resampling, see the tutorial Resizing Images.