Help: can't get file size small enough for Critique Arena

Georgios Christopoulos

@Rebecca-Jensen did you flatten the image by merging the layers before saving?

AngelinaKizz

@Rebecca-Jensen copy the canvas, and paste it into a new canvas. This canvas is carrying memory of all of your strokes.

Rebecca Jensen

@Georgios-Christopoulos Good question! Yes, I tried merging the layers first before saving, but it didn't seem to change the result.

@AngelinaKizz I hadn't heard of this! However, it looks like I only saved 12kb, going from 768kb to 756kb, which is unfortunately not enough.

This is so strange! It doesn't LOOK like a super complex artwork to me.

Nyrryl Cadiz

@Rebecca-Jensen what fily type did you save it as? JPEG? PNG?

kayleenartlover

Maybe check to see if your dpi is 300 or smaller

Rebecca Jensen

@Nyrryl-Cadiz I saved it as a JPEG. I was surprised to see that PNG was not an option to Save As in Photoshop (unless it's somewhere special that I don't know about).

@kayleenartlover I tried many different DPI, even as small as 60dpi! Much smaller and I'll have "pixel art", haha.

kayleenartlover

@Rebecca-Jensen that is so strange. Maybe, just take a screenshot of it and see if that makes any difference? ‍️

Nyrryl Cadiz

@Rebecca-Jensen I see. Well, what are its dimensions?

Rebecca Jensen

@Nyrryl-Cadiz I just made it shorter, so now it's 1200 x 888px. Saved at 300dpi and "medium" quality, it's 929kb, and at 150dpi and the "lowest" quality, I can get it to 760kb, but at significant loss in quality.

I went to the upload page just now to see if I would still be able to upload it at a larger file size, and there's another line that says "You may only submit one file with maximum 1 MB in size" !

Oi. I am going to go ahead and submit the 929kb version, as I really tried to get it smaller!

Thanks all for your ideas.

ArtMelC

@Rebecca-Jensen go to the advanced option before exporting to jpeg and uncheck everything that says "Embed" this and that. Sorry I can't name the specific menu in PS but you will probably know what I am talking about once you go into the export function.

Before removing embedded information, my image was stuck at 700+ mb even at thr lowest quality. After removing the embedded information, it is 400+mb at High quality.

Kim Rosenlof

@Rebecca-Jensen If you haven't found a solution you can do the following in Photoshop:
File>Export>Save for Web> Image size - change the W or H to 1200 >Save?
You can keep it as a jpeg or png at the top. I would save it in a JPEG format if it is a raster image like a picture. This has always worked for me for online images.

Meekipink

Try running your jpg through a free online image compressor/optimizer. I always compress before uploading to social media (or anywhere online, really), since it drastically reduces the size and helps prevent image theft.

I usually use this one, but it doesn't seem to be working right now. There are plenty of others though.