Last year I shared my method of how I export my photos for sharing with clients and social media without losing quality. While that method is proven, it was always still a pain to share a separate file for full resolution, not to mention that full resolution photos can push 20 MB a piece. Thankfully, I was introduced to an app that overcomes all of this.
I was recently introduced to an application called JPEGmini. The purpose of this app is to cut your photo file's size in half or more without sacrificing any resolution or quality. I was skeptical at first but I put it to the test in my video above. Take a look for yourself.
According to the JPEGmini plugin I saved 11.4 MB of file space, and my final image resulted in a size of 3.9 MB. Not bad for starting with a 36-megapixel raw file.
I was pleasantly surprised how the quality is retained when sharing my exported photos to Facebook. My photos still look crisp even though they are still full resolution. This app is a game changer for myself and makes it so much easier to share with clients, friends, and social media without having to create multiple files for different purposes.
The JPEGmini Pro bundle comes with a few options, most notably its new Photoshop plugin, and it also comes with a Lightroom plugin as well as its stand-alone application. All together it is on special for a limited time at $99. For more information about the plugin, check out their website.
Started using it a couple of weeks ago, does what it says on tin !
Space saved, time saved uploading when I have crappy internet and the images on my website now load much faster without loss of quality. The plug ins for LR and PS are very nice, but the app where you just drag a folder on to it and then come back and it's all done is really awesome.
Wish I had found out about this a while ago.
I don't get the space saved. The cost of the app is $99 wish could buy a 3-4TB drive as of today. As drive space gets cheaper and cheaper daily less of a reason to buy this program as a consumer. This technology should be sold to editing software like adobe photoshop or/and lightroom.
Extremely valid point on the cost/external storage. The only time I use jpeg is for client delivery. And those get uploaded to a cloud service and do not reside on my machine. Otherwise it's RAW and PSD files on my computer. Now if this could do the same with RAW files, then I would see it as way more beneficial.
I'm curious on the export time to jpegmini, as that may negate the benefits of slow upload speeds.
You can also use the free version, both offline and online. It is not all about storage for me, but for instance I use pixieset for my proofs, I can have a free pixieset account if my total is under 3gb, as I crept up to 3gb I was forced to either delete older proofing galleries or pay for the premium version to get unlimited. Instead I redid the galleries using jpegmini and am still under 3gb.
Images on my website load faster despite being larger versions, etc..
Export time to Jpegmini is very quick, the pro version does give you the export features in Lightroom and Photoshop (nice to have, but not 100% necessary) and it's not so common your Jpeg hi res files would be over 50mb in size, but if so (a stitched pano) then sure the pro version is for you.
Ah I thought it was the app itself for $99. Gotcha I'll into it then :-)
Good info. Thanks Andy!!
Couldn't find the free version of the app, "amateur" version was $20, decent price for the right person looking to save time for clients, if allowed to use it for that since the version is meant for hobbyists apparently.
you don't live where the internet is slow, if it works at all :) things like this are a life saver when you are somewhere where it takes 10 minutes to upload a 5mb file
JPEGMini is definitely an interesting tool to optimize images. It works well and gets the job done effectively.
I would also recommend BatchPhoto Espresso. It's a free online photo editor that enables you to resize, convert, crop or rotate multiple images at once.
At 680x360, the before and after isn't very useful. Probably a website limitation, but I'm convinced enough to give it a try. Thanks Nick!
Yes, that is what the site is limited to. I cropped my photo at 100% to help a little.
It's pretty amazing. Fantastic for helping your website load times and my clients love that I've cut their gallery download times in half. Can't recommend enough.
Honestly the only clients I'm worried about are the ones who have very low data caps on their mobile devices. Desktop with more and more people having very high speed internet ranging from 10-100mbps speeds, its not a thought honestly. Now if people had .5-3mbps (DSL or Satellite internet) then yea.
I'd worry about it more than that if I I was you. The speediness of your website makes a huge difference in how your clients feel about you. If you have multi megabyte images loading, even on a fast machine, a user will have to wait a bit. If your site is fast, it makes a good impression.
Fast machine is one thing, I was talking about internet speeds increasing. I just upgraded to cable internet from DSL and see more people going into that direction due to the large differences in speed for cost. And I live in the suburbs, with 75mbps. 1-2mb jpg files are a cake to load on my home network.
I think any time I can cut my client's download time in half and not lose any quality in my images it's worth it. If I deliver a 300 image gallery, that's going to be a 3gb+ download, but with JPEGmini I can make it less than half that. My corporate clients don't like sitting and waiting for a 10 minute download, they want things as fast as possible.
I'm not sure if cutting 1 second in half is much of a noticeable difference honestly unless they're a computer then for sure that is a huge difference. 300 image gallery, all same resolution as if it would be on the equivalent quality shown in the samples would not be 3gbs, at least not for me, at most 100mb and thats if its a download. High res. 300dpi 5000+px yea, more like 3gbs.
As for corporate clients, then yes, depends in case by case. I shoot and specialize in senior portraits, and don't sell or deliver just digitals but when I do (include it into collections) its all low resolution via web, wouldn't be more than 40mb since I don't overkill my finals.
Yeah I'm talking about my usage scenario which is the full res images, usually 8-10mb, but JPEGmini cuts those down to 2-3mb which makes way more than half a second's worth of difference. It's all about the tools that fit your needs.
I have found at best a 20% space savings over just saving for web in PSCC.
I've been using it for about a year now...give or take. I've found it incredibly useful in my workflow.
Does it preserve exif info? Thats something I would like to know.
For those that don't wanna pay and need more support of different file formats (gif & PNG) can check out ImageOptim (https://imageoptim.com). It's been great and now can be used to automatically reduce file size image (for the geeks among us - command line). I've been using it for years and it's great! And you can even add it to the system Services (Mac - not sure on Windows) and its always there when you need it.
I've been using this for almost a year now, and it is AWESOME for delivering images electronically. I'm so convinced now of its quality that I even sent mini'd files to print!
Not worth it for $99. $99 gets me 3TB external hard drive. Only way JPGmini will succeed is if they become the NORM standard like JPG is or PNG, etc... but granted there is no real way to earn cash in that market unless JPGmini sold their technology to someone like Adobe :-) !!!
I understand your reasoning, but I find this useful for a different reason. Usually I'd make a full-res file and then a separate smaller file for sharing/social media. What I like about this app is that it eliminates me having to make multiple files for different uses, one size fits all if you will.
FWIW, JPEGmini is not a new image format (like JPEG2000 or something). Files are saved as standard JPG files, the compression is just optimized. It's the same as using "Save for Web" in Photoshop, except JPEGmini chooses the "quality" setting for you, according to the image.
Ok I misunderstood the use, but I could still see the technology being used and sold to Adobe for photoshop and lightroom uses...doesn't anyone agree with that notion than having a completely separate application for this and at about half the of a full working lightroom?
The "Pro" version that costs $99 ships as a lightroom/photoshop plugin, so integration into your workflow isn't really a problem. But since the size and quality aren't any better than Photoshop (it's a time-saver at best), I wouldn't pay for it.
Ah I thought it was the app itself for $99. Gotcha I'll into it then :-)
Nice! I'll have to give it a try myself. These D800 files are rather huge. ;)
I do agree that the cost of storage space is dropping, however having another tool in the kit does help.
Saving disc space is not the best selling point, and neither is faster client delivery. However, a very important aspect is this: Google (if I am not mistaken) ranks a fast loading website higher. Boom. That would be the reason for buying this.
If money is a concern, try ImageOptim on mac...does the job!
I tested JPEGmini for a while, and found that it didn't do any better than Photoshop "Save for Web" does, when compressing images. The only real advantage is that the process is more automated. With Photoshop, you have to find the right quality level for your particular image if you want the best size reduction, while JPEGmini keeps the process automated.
I suppose this would be useful if you shoot JPG and have thousands of them and don't mind losing quality from the originals (JPG is lossy, so no matter what you do, you're going to lose some quality). If you have a more limited number of JPGs to deal with, it makes more sense to run them through Photoshop (if you have it) and save yourself the money.
Photoshop save for web is 72dpi (correct me if wrong), If I export as a 300dpi and then use jpegmini it is still a 300dpi but smaller file size.
Photoshop does set the metadata to 72ppi, yes, but that doesn't change anything in the image. Either way, though, you end up with a photo of the same pixel dimensions; if you save a 1000 x 1000 pixel image, it's going to be 1000 pixels wide at 72 ppi or 300 ppi, and how it displays on your viewing device will depend on its screen resolution and the display resolution of the program that you're viewing with (which will be lower than 300ppi regardless), so I'm not sure that there's any practical difference there.
The JPEG file header has provisions for extensions such as 10/12-bits per channel. Imagine how valuable that feature would be for JPEGMini!
How were the original JPEGs being exported that these JPEGmini processed JPEGs are being compared to? You can save a lot of storage with imperceivable quality drops - even more so if facebook is your desired medium (since it destroys the quality of any uploaded JPEG).
I believe I've downloaded and tried this program twice now, several years apart, and the last time only a few months ago with an eye to purchasing it if I liked it, but I didn't end up doing it. I can see its usefulness as an application for images you want to upload for the reason of fast loading, etc, but when I took a real good, close up look I could see that the resulting image after having run the program does have artifacts. I DEFINITELY wouldn't use it to archive images for the express purpose of saving space. Your images won't be as good as they started out.
Thanks for the informative article. I tried it on some full-resolution JPEGs and the results are impressive. I included some outdoor portraits, and while on close inspection I can see a few pixel-level differences, the overall image is indistinguishable from the original. My tests also included some edge cases (theatre shots of black light-lit stage performers at ISO 51,200 on a Nikon D750) with good results both in image quality and file size savings.
It would help if they added a preference to allow selecting the output folder at the start of the conversion, and to reset the "space savings" counter. But there's nothing else quite like it and I purchased it shortly after testing.
JPEG 2000 all over again...
Its not a new file format, just more efficient compression. It is still a completely compliant jpeg.
I'm not sure why I would do this, I save all my RAW files from my D800E and my Hassy. Drives are becoming larger and larger while dropping the price. Just bought a 5gb Saegate for $99. With years in the IT arena keeping the RAW files along with the processed TIFF is the way to go. Just remember do an offsite backup!
I save all my RAW files and the un ... minified? ... versions on my in house backup system (redundant external HDD) but I upload the minified versions to cloud storage as my external backup.
I also use JPEG mini for web display or to deliver to my clients who purchase digital files and on my phone and tablet as my portable portfolio. I did a difference map, the difference between straight from RAW to jpeg vs minified are imperceptible even when doing a difference map unless you zoom in at 200%+
Been using it for over a year.
I was curious about the difference between the images so I took a jpeg and ran it through jpeg mini. The original jpg was 18Mb ... the JPEGMinified (?) version was 6MB.
I then overlayed the Mini version over the original in PS and set the top layer as a difference map.
If you zoom in at like 200% on the difference map you can see some SLIGHT differences.
Here is a link to the comparison image (ORIGINAL | MINI | DIFF MAP)
https://flic.kr/p/xwUVzo
Download and pixel peep the difference map ... anything not pure black = a difference between the two images. Be aware that this image is massive (11232 X 5616) since it is a 20MP image 3 X (side by side comparison) so about 63MP.
Another thing everyone might be interested in is a new app for iPhone which came out yesterday, which can optimize the photos on your phone, shrinking 7GB down to 1GB according to their literature. It stores smaller screen-sized images on your phone while uploading the larger versions to the cloud (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc). I haven't tested it out yet...
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/avast-photo-space/id1099203586?mt=8
Good to gain some points on google, page speed is one of the metrics for good ranking.