New workflow

After a lengthy discussion on a forum I am on, I decided to look through my workflow that I use to post images to the web. Before I would do a three step method of doing touchup work in photoshop CS3, then batch resizing the images in MS Picture Manager to 640x480, saving them, and then opening them in my watermarking tool. This was secretly creating a lot of artifacting and compression in the image. That maked my images appear less sharp and detailed than they really are. 

JPG files are a Lossy format, meaning everytime you modify them and save them, compression is applied to the image and some of the data is lost. I was saving them three times and never really output sharpening them for the web. 

Well I fixed these issues this morning by adapting a much simplier and faster way to output images for this website and the many forums I am apart of. Now after photoshop I simply just open them in my watermarking tool, do the watermarking, sharpening, and resize all in one shot. This means less compression and sharper images. I also upped my standard size from 640x480 to maximum of 660px on each edge. This means that from now on my images will be slightly bigger on your screen, as well as showing more detail. The file sizes should also be kept around the same size as well, which means no increase in loading times. 

Here's an example of what I'm talking about! 

Before:



New:


Look closely and you will see the extra detail and slight increase in size. It's like more branches just appeared on the trees! I encourage all of you photographers out to there come up with an effecient way to put your images on the web so they look the best.