File size question

[milesbrew]

I'm putting together a slideshow for a group of high school students who I recently chaperoned on a trip to Italy. Everyone gave me their digital files for me to out the show together.

My question:

the files vary in size (all jpeg) with some being quite large 5+megapixels to much smaller. Is it helpful to resize all of the files smaller for the slideshow? I'm worried that if I have a slideshow with 400+ images that the final .exe file will be huge.

Thanks, Tom

[Lin Evans]

Hi Tom,

Absolutely, you want to resize the images to no larger than necessary to conserve resources for your show. The bottom line is that the "only" time you need an image larger than the display device resolution which the image will be shown on is when you are doing a deep zoom in on a feature in that specific image. There is absolutely zero advantage in your images being larger than the display. For example, if you assume that the vast majority of users will have displays with an HD resolution of 1920x1080, then only use larger images for those few (if any) instances where you intend to zoom in. If you need to do a close in zoom on a particular image, then make that image large enough to not lose sharpness when you zoom in. As an example, I have a number of different digital cameras ranging from 10 megapixel to 40 megapixel image sizes. I downsample all these images to about two megapixel size for the vast majority of my shows. Things will run much smoother when your images are reasonably sized and for an executable show which give you the very best quality, you don't want to exceed the capabilities of the least common denominator in the chain of possible computer systems that the show will run on. Also there is a limit of about 2 gigabytes for a single executable file. This limitation is imposed by 32 bit software which will play on virtually all systems.

So the easiest way to do this is use something like Irfanview or Fastone to resample all images to a standardized size in one dimension. Assuming your kids used cameras, phone cameras, etc., then probably see what the least resolution is, and if it's close to HD, just resample everything to 1080 pixels on the short side. Since there are a number of aspect ratios with different cameras, you can't always assume wide-angle or such. Most consumer cameras shoot in either 3:2 or 4:3 aspect ratio. Some of the newer ones also shoot in 16:9. If you just consentrate on the vertical height, then you will have sufficient width so that you can either crop or expand individual images to fit your desired display matrix. If you stay with reasonable jpg compression - say the equivalent of Photoshop six to eight, you should get excellent results.

Best regards,

Lin

[milesbrew]

Huge help, Lin. Downloaded Irfanview and should be able to gure it out.

Thanks!

[Guest Yachtsman1]

I'm putting together a slideshow for a group of high school students who I recently chaperoned on a trip to Italy. Everyone gave me their digital files for me to out the show together.

My question:

the files vary in size (all jpeg) with some being quite large 5+megapixels to much smaller. Is it helpful to resize all of the files smaller for the slideshow? I'm worried that if I have a slideshow with 400+ images that the final .exe file will be huge.

Thanks, Tom

Hi Tom

If you re-size the images before examining them you could have a disappointed class. I never use batch resizing as each picture taken is unique & probably needs some attention before committing it to a show. Lightening, cropping, straightening are just 3 of the things I look at before re-sizing. If you resize them & then try to correct them they could end up undersized. I know it's a pain, but it's the route I would take especially as the images come from unknown sources.

Yachtsman1.