Why are my JPGs suddenly so large?

[Stone_Swan]

Hey, guys!  I originally posted this over at Photoshop General Discussion, and was told you might be able to help me figure out what's going on.  Original post:

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I have an action that saves my images for my clients as 2460x1640 JPG at quality 8.  Up until around July 25th, each image saved this way came out to about 200-600KB, which is very convenient for uploading and sharing.  Since that time, however, all such images saved in this manner have sizes between 2-4MB.  This is much, much less convenient, considering I deliver images to clients by the dozens.

I have not opened Adobe Application Manager to update Photoshop or anything of the sort.  This started happening on its own.  Why?

I changed the quality of saves to 6, and there's little to no difference in file size - they still end up at 2-4MB.

Has anyone encountered this, or is anyone able to replicate it?  Help!

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Additional info after discussion:

1.) Doing the action steps manually results in a lower file size like normal.  The action itself seems to be what's creating the problem.

2.) Re-recording the action provides either no change in results or, strangely, temporary semi-effective change in results.  I've re-recorded it twice.  The first time, it still gave very large file sizes.  The second time, it gave 800KB-1.5MB file sizes (still a bit too large, and at lower quality) for a while.  Then when I had more work to do later, it started giving me 2-4MB file sizes again.

3.) Resetting preferences has had no effect.

4.) Had the Photoshop CC version previous to CC 2014 when first posting.  I have since installed CC 2014 and there's no change in results.

I appreciate any input!  Thanks!

-Tom

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Please post a pair of images (large result from Action, small result from manual save).

[Stone_Swan]

Hi!  Sorry for the late response.  Yesterday, they were saving via action just fine, to sizes ranging from 200KB to 1.5MB.  Today, all the pictures I edited all came out large (2MB-4.5MB) via the action.  This is crazy!

So I used a pic from today.  I went through my editing process on the same pic twice, exactly the same way, only for one copy using the action to save/close the final image and for the other copy doing the steps of the action manually.  The results came out as expected:

http://www.thatonesummer.com/other/large.jpg

http://www.thatonesummer.com/other/small.jpg

The "small" one, of course, being the one done manually, and the "large" one done through the action.

Thanks!

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Please post images on this Forum directly in the future.

Apparently the two images have different compression settings – 8 and 12 respectively.

[Stone_Swan]

I looked for an option to attach but couldn't find one.  Now I see it - the camera icon.  Which doesn't make sense, because there's already a pretty common "paper clip" icon for attaching things...

How can you see the compression setting used?  That sounds very useful.

Anyway, I've figured it out.  Your comment caused me to test something, since the manual pic was saved at quality 8 and the action was originally recorded at quality 6.  Turns out that the action doesn't care what quality you record it with - that info is not saved.  It uses the last quality setting used.

For the two pics I posted above, I ran the action first.  Then I did it manually, and in the Save dialog box, I had to change the quality from 12 to 8.  Presumably, that means that the action used 12.  Sure enough, when I would manually save with 8, the action would then give me small sizes.  When I would then manually save at 12, it would then give me large sizes.

Much thanks!

[c.pfaffenbichler]

How can you see the compression setting used?

Some time ago someone posted Script/s to get that setting.

Have you tried Save for Web instead of Save as? Does that store the quality settings?

[Stone_Swan]

I would use Save As, but it also remembers the location saved to.  I'd like my edits to overwrite the originals in the folder I opened them from, and I'm often opening them from different locations.  Never tried Save for Web in an action - I'll give it a shot.

Thanks for the script link!

[c.pfaffenbichler]

ps-scripts.com • View topic - Find Quality used in JPEG