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I have a number of photo's which are >7mb in size and I want to upload them online for a photobook. I have uploaded photo's of this size to numerous photobook sites before but this particular site for photobooks suggests reducing the size to 2-3mb otherwise the software will be very slow. I have compressed photo's of this size before in Microsoft picture manager (when I want to use them on my pc at work as screen savers but I haven't got much drive space) and they have looked ok on screen but will this affect the print quality? The largest size photo I would have in the photo book would be approx A4.

I don't really want to download any software to compress the photo's as I am always concerned about downloading things as I'm not very tech savvy! I could have downloaded software for this particular photobook site, which is suitable for large photo sizes, to use offline but again I was worried about downloading it! If I chose not to compress the photo's would it really take that long to upload them? Any answer or advice would be appreciated! Thanks!

ElendilTheTall
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user50181
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  • Why don't you just try to upload them uncompressed and see whether it takes much longer? – Zenit Apr 01 '16 at 14:42
  • I understand that you are carefull about downloading software. But do not limit yourself by fear. Some programs could expand your horizons! Besides an outdated software could be potentially harmfull too. – Rafael May 04 '16 at 13:52

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The first important consideration is that you are using outdated and retired software. Microsoft Office Picture Manager was put to rest about 5 years ago and replaced by Windows Live Photo Gallery. You may want to consider trying out the replacement. This is not to say that either option is the best, but at least you know what you are dealing with here. If you are two afraid to work with newer software or download software, that is a whole other issue.

As far as acceptable file sizes for printing images of that size(A4), it is reasonable to compress JPG images to the 2-3MB range for printing at this size. Any recompression like this does inherently have the opportunity to impact print quality. Will the print quality be perceptible to you? I doubt it but it is difficult to say with certainty.

I would recommend reading a bit more on this topic:

Community
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dpollitt
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