Newbie question about optimizing images for the web

Best of luck Jarvis.

Photoshop is simply the bee's knees

Thank you all for so much effort & information.

There is a lot to digest here.

I will study it at length and come back for more.

Is there a more efficient way to produce high quality images for the web?

Since you're starting out in Lightroom, I suggest that you do everything there.

Lightroom is perfectly capable of doing everything you need, including resizing, sharpening and exporting.

First of all, use the Detail panel in Develop to apply capture sharpening to the images.

This has to be done at 1:1 view (any other view will be inaccurate and misleading), and the image should look sharp, but not too sharp. Sharpening too much looks worse than not sharpening enough, so if in doubt, sharpen less.

Select all the images you want to export in Library, then click Export.

Use the settings in the screenshot below as a starting point.

• Existing files is set to Overwrite without warning - if you're not pleased with an exported file, change the settings and export again, and the file you exported first will be overwritten.
• Quality: 60 is usually a good compromise between quality and file size, but use a higher setting if required.
• Color space: Always use sRGB.
• Image sizing: Establish what pixel dimensions you want for your exports.
  It doesn't matter what number you enter in the Resolution field, that's only used for printing.
• Output sharpening: Set Sharpen for to Screen. When the image has received proper capture sharpening in Develop, setting Amount to Standard will usually produce good results.

Your assumption about downsampling images is correct.

There are ways to automate process or in other words to batch process images if that's what you mean by more efficient way. You can use Image Processor Pro for that job.

Think in terms of pixel dimensions, not size on screen. That's just an arbitrary property of whatever screen you're looking at.

Resolution / ppi is a print parameter, moot and not valid on screen. On screen, one image pixel maps to one screen pixel.

Don't sharpen, then resize! That defeats the whole purpose. Initial capture sharpening in Lightroom is one thing, but final output sharpening must be done at final pixel dimensions. In Photoshop, I'd recommend the ACR filter for the sharpening.

The most efficient way to do this is to record an action in Photoshop - resizing-sharpening-Save For Web at the push of one single F-key - as long as individual treatment is not required.

Got a link to your existing website?