Can someone please tell me how to make 15k thumbnails that don't look like, um, poop?

P.S. I'm using PS Elements 2 as my editor.

I use PS Elements 2 as well and don't have a problem. Are you using the 'Save for the Web' facility? Just open your image, select 'Save for the Web' and when the window opens up choose a size of, say 175 x 175, choose high quality jpeg and save. Very occasionally I've had to change to medium quality but high is usually OK. The jpeg will usually be somewhere between 12 and 15 kb. Your image has to be 72 dpi to start with. I'm not very good at explaining but hope this helps. Feel free to email me if I can help any further.

Attached Link: http://www.fookes.com/ezthumbs/

Message edited on: 03/15/2006 16:56

I use Paintshop Pro to make my thumbnails. I also use it to convert my 1024 x 768 or 650 x 768 images to jpeg because it makes a smaller file at max quality (min compression) than Photoshop does. Sharpening an image with the High Pass filter in Photoshop increases the file size and sometimes it ends up more than the 500kb limit. After I resize the large image down to 200 x whatever to stay within the dimension limits here, I do a "Sharpen" and then save that at the highest quality (least compression) that ends up below 15kb. Ranges between 7% and 20% compression and typically is around 12%, depending on how detailed and/or contrasty the image is. Hope you get it figured out - a great thumbnail can get you a lot more viewings and it is the "first impression" that one gets when they see your images. Rick

Thanks to everyone for the advise. I'm sure I'll get it worked out soon. By the way, Rick, thanks for your masking and texturing tutorial. I ran through it a couple of weeks ago and have been practicing with varying results ever since!

i just use microsoft office picture manager's export function. it's simple and i can set the compression level more exactly than with PSP or Photoshop or The GIMP.

I use imagemagick, using this commandline (both for the image and the thumbnail): convert -filter ***** -resize x! -quality ** image.bmp lowresimage.jpg filter=lanczos for more detail, triangle for less detail (more compression). resize=size of new image quality=usually 90 or more. If i have large tumbh i use sometimes 89, which is very smaller in size than 90. It's a very nice program..... i use it also to put border and title on my prints.....