Please can you help me lower the size of Adobe Photoshop Elements Image files?

[hilarylondon]

I am creating a Photobook with montages of pictures on each page. I started using my old Windows 7 PC with Photoshop Elements 9. JPGS were 17Mb and Adobe Photoshop Elements Image files were 245Mb. This week I got a new Windows 10 PC instead, and bought Photoshop Elements 15. I saved some pages with identical edits. JPGS were 25Mb and Adobe Photoshop Elements Image files were 1.8Gb. I am about to run out of disc! Please can you tell me what to do to make them the same, smaller size as before? Thank you very much. Hilary

[99jon]

What type of file is the one sized 1.8GB?

Is it a project (PSE) Photoshop Document (PSD) or Tif etc?

[hilarylondon]

Thank you for your message. It is just a PSD file I believe. What do you think? Hilary

[99jon]

If you open the info/tags panel on the right of the Organizer the file type should be displayed as part of the saved file name.

How many pages? What page size? How are you intending to print the book?

[hilarylondon]

Hallo 99jon

I am confused sorry by your email. If I try and resave the file in Photoshop Elements it says it is of type Photoshop(*.PSD, *.PDD)

Printing the book is irrelevant, sorry – that is done via the CEWE online system. The new pages are exactly the same type and size of file as before, with pictures montaged on layers. It is just when I created them previously in Photoshop Elements 9 they were 200Mb large and now with Photoshop Elements 15 this week they are 1.8Gb large.

Is there any way of making them a similar size?

[99jon]

I would normally convert the layered PSD into a jpeg for uploading. CEWE will certainly prefer jpegs. Follow these steps:

Select the PSD in organizer and from the menu choose:

File >> Export as new file(s)

Choose jpeg

Set photo size to Original

Choose quality e.g. 8 or 9 for high quality

Choose a location e.g. desktop, pictures folder etc

Choose original names

Click export button

Go to your selected folder and upload the jpegs to CEWE

[hilarylondon]

Thank you very much 99jon for your replies

We absolutely do convert them to jpg and then upload to CEWE. It is just that we also keep the PSD files (with the pictures in layers) also, in case we occasionally need to change a picture – it is easier to do that in PSD and then make a new jpg and upload it. So we do want to keep the PSDs too.

Just a thought – we always save the JPG as 12 high quality. Would it be ok to save as 10 high quality, or would the photobook pages not be as clear? I have had an argument about this with my husband. But it doesn’t help with the PSDs being 1.8Gb each. ??

[99jon]

You can use 12 but those files will have less compression and will take longer to upload to CEWE. I usually select 8 or 9 and get a high quality export at 300ppi.

You can make your own pages for montage. If interested I have video demo.

https://youtu.be/MM1Ey3T3o0Y

[hilarylondon]

Thank you for your video 99jon – lovely photos. We create each page very like the video, only I choose specific pictures for each page, and we Open them in Photoshop Elements – now using 15, then my husband (who is the page designer!) drags them into the main new blank page from the Photo Bin and moves them around as you did. And we want to save the PSD page with the layers as you did.

Tonight I will ask him to check we aren’t creating new blank pages which are 10 metres as opposed to the 10 inches etc in your own video (could be the reason for huge PSDs if we were), but I don’t think we are. I will come back to you tomorrow, thank you.

[hilarylondon]

Hi 99jon

We checked the size of the PSD pages. They are the same 74 x 29 cm and 300 ppi in the small PSD created by Photoshop Elements 9 and the 10 times larger PSD created by Photoshop Elements 15. Is there any way to stop these huge sizes please?

[MichelBParis]

hilarylondon  wrote

Hi 99jon

We checked the size of the PSD pages. They are the same 74 x 29 cm and 300 ppi in the small PSD created by Photoshop Elements 9 and the 10 times larger PSD created by Photoshop Elements 15. Is there any way to stop these huge sizes please?

Does your PSD saved in Elements 15 include smart layers? That's what happens when you drag from the photobin.

If so, as a test, duplicate the PSD, simplify all smart layers and compare the final size.

[hilarylondon]

Aha! Thank you so much MichelBParis! When we went into the PSD file, and in the Layer menu chose “simplify layers” it went back to 245Mb. Hooray!

What is a smart layer, and why did it create them without us knowing or requesting them?

[MichelBParis · Accepted solution]

hilarylondon  wrote

Aha!  Thank you so much MichelBParis! When we went into the PSD file, and in the Layer menu chose “simplify layers” it went back to 245Mb. Hooray!

What is a smart layer, and why did it create them without us knowing or requesting them?

Imagine your project is to create a composite of a number  of your photos.

When you drag such a photo from the photo bin to your canvas, you are shown the bounding box of that photo to be able to decide where to move it, resize or strighten it. The resulting layer is not a regular one with real pixels. A flattened full size copy of the dragged photo is stored into your the psd file of your canvas. What you see in the smart layer is the result of calculating the resulting transformation of that original image by a function of how you have located, sized and rotated the rectangle showing where you want the result to be. The stored image stays unchanged, but you are allowed to change your mind, move, resize and rotate later on without losing quality. With a regular layer, you will lose quality by enlarging a layer you have already placed on your canvas.

The price to pay for that flexibility is mainly the size of the resulting psd or tiff layered file. It's also that smart layers don't allow a number of operations. So, you have to 'simplify' the smart layer into a regular one, which removes the stored original and freezes the definitive pixels of the converted layer.

[hilarylondon]

Thank you very much - very helpful information.