Photoshop PSD File size

[Fred Weiss]

Is there any way to compress PSD files that I'm just not seeing? I understand that I could compress the finished files with ZIP or RAR. Just wondering if there's any way to actually reduce the file size like Adobe provides with their PDF format.

 

[sign&frame]

why do you need to compress it for? And why not use another type of file format...

 

[Fred Weiss]

why do you need to compress it for? And why not use another type of file format...

Internet download of large high resolution images that support background transparency in the most applications. None of the other formats that support transparency will work in the applications we want to address. So now that you know that, does that help you to answer my question?

 

[SebastienL]

You can compress .tiff files and keep your layers. But, in general, compression is not good. You loose information every time you save with compression. So, unless it's just for a proof for your customer, I don't see the need for compressing a PSD file.

 

[sign&frame]

Hmm it does answer question.
Saving in srgb will reduce size but other than that you got me stumped

 

[Sparky]

In CS3, you can save it as a Photoshop Large Document - does that effect your file size? It does mine, but not huge amounts or anything magical.

 

[Fred Weiss]

You can compress .tiff files and keep your layers. But, in general, compression is not good. You loose information every time you save with compression. So, unless it's just for a proof for your customer, I don't see the need for compressing a PSD file.

I would disagree with that. There is lossy and lossless compression. PNG and TIFF are both lossless while JPG is lossy.

My problem is that a 70 MB PSD is 15 MB in PNG with no quality loss ... but since Flexi doesn't support PNG, and screws up transparent TIFF and does support PSD, I would like to accomodate my customers for tiles that use transparency. 70 MB is way too big for many clients who would want to download from us.

 

[Fred Weiss]

In CS3, you can save it as a Photoshop Large Document - does that effect your file size? It does mine, but not huge amounts or anything magical.

Thanks for the suggestion. There are two problems with that however.

• File size is largely unaffected.
• Outside of Photoshop, this is not a supported file format.

 

[GK]

Have you tried using PNG? they won't be layered but the transparency stays and the quality is far better then JPEG.

 

[sign&frame]

Stupid question but why not save a separate Flexi Sign version that will be a lot smaller for those users who primary use Flexi?
I knopw some company sell tiles that way

 

[SebastienL]

How big and what resolution is your image. Could you lower the resolution? Flattening the image before saving will diminish file size. What will your customer do with the image?

 

[ChiknNutz]

So what all files are supported by Flexi? That information would make it easier to choose one of them than to guess one that is not supported. I understand that retaining layers is important. What is getting hosed with transparent TIFF files?

Oops, I mean that transparency is important, not layers...

 

[Fred Weiss]

Have you tried using PNG? they won't be layered but the transparency stays and the quality is far better then JPEG.

Yes, PNG is what we distribute in now. It works great if your approach is like ours, which is to do our image editing and setup in an image editor such as Photoshop. Unfortunately, a lot of guys doing wide format printing, use nothing but Flexi, which does not support PNG. The net result is that they lose access to that part of our libraries and can only use the tiles we offer in JPG format.

 

[Fred Weiss]

Stupid question but why not save a separate Flexi Sign version that will be a lot smaller for those users who primary use Flexi?
I knopw some company sell tiles that way

Flexi doesn't work that way and they tiles they sell have the same issue.

 

[sign&frame]

Oh gotcha

 

[Fred Weiss]

How big and what resolution is your image. Could you lower the resolution? Flattening the image before saving will diminish file size. What will your customer do with the image?

Resolution is 12" x 12" at 300 PPI (3600 x 3600 pixel dimension). Flattening the image destroys the transparency which is the point of what i'm trying to preserve. Lowering the resolution reduces the quality of what I sell. My customer is the wide format printers and sign guys. they will use it for banners, wraps and other large sized background needs.

 

[Fred Weiss]

So what all files are supported by Flexi? That information would make it easier to choose one of them than to guess one that is not supported. I understand that retaining layers is important. What is getting hosed with transparent TIFF files?

Transparent TIFFs come into Flexi with the transparent portions converted to black. The only format that works reliably is PSD but the file size is a serious problem.

 

[SebastienL]

What version of Photoshop are you using? I just took a layered image I had and flattened it and it didn't affect the transparencies. Obviously, you can't edit it after it's flattened.
Maybe you can merge layers that don't have transparencies together. Layers add alot of weight to the file size, how many do you have in your image?

 

[Service Sign Co]

Would going to edit-preferences- and un-check "always maximize compatibility for PSD files" reduce size?

 

[flyinhawaiian968]

Only thing I've found that works relatively well is saving files in Photoshop as layered TIFF, use ZIP compression and at the bottom of the save screen, save as zip(slower saves, smaller files). With just that bottom box checked, I took a 7 layer RGB file from 1.8mb down to 812kb.

Not sure if it will reduce higher-res files down as much as mine, but it might get you closer to distributing a smaller file for your customers.

Chris