Urgent Help Requested:Photos for my website

[yoldashh]

Hello all,and thanks for your time.i will be grateful if you help me with tis serious problem.
i have con 6 d and 17-40mm lens.
i take my carpets photos with this camera and happy with the results but only problem is the image size is too large like 10 mb in jpeg format.i always shoot jpeg and raw.
now 10 mb jpeg is too big for my website photos.my competitor www.carpetvista.com has almost same pixels but their size is maximum 400 kb .please vist that site and see it.
my questions are as follows,
1 what size should i put in my canon 6d .L M or S ?
what i think is that i can shoot L but later can reduce the size .am i right ?L size giving me jpeg size 10 mb maximum.
Please please help me sort out my problem as my job is at stake .
Many thanks in advance.
Kind regards

[Mr Bean]

Personally, I'd only shoot RAW. Then use Lightroom to export the file as the size and quality you need for the web site. Lightroom has some neat ways to setup final export image sizes / JPEG quality, etc that are repeatable.

Note: I'm no expert in web site images / design, so, others may have far more practical approaches.

[akraj]

I wouldn't change the setting in the Camera but as Mr Bean mentioned change the resolution to a much smaller one during export.  What software do you use to copy/import the images from your camera/card ?

[Mt Spokane Photography]

If you do not use Photoshop, consider hiring someone to prepare them for you. 
 
Photoshop has a Save for web feature that lets you optimize a image and play with the parameters to see how you like the image as well as see the size.
 
You should not find it necessary to have over about 25-30 K image size.
 
Here is your competitors front page image reduced from 1.8MB to 36kb.  He seems to be vastly overdoing it. 
 

[TrumpetPower!]

If you do not use Photoshop, consider hiring someone to prepare them for you. 

Amen.

All comercial photography, especially product photography, is going to need at least some post-processing. Indeed, the post-processing is often more extensive than the actual shooting -- and the shooting itself can get pretty involved, what with all the lighting and other types of preparation.

The last step in any such work is optimizing the image for the final format where it'll be used. Different techniques are necessary for printing in a catalog, making a billboard, or posting on the Web. Even if you magically got the image perfect in the camera, you'd still have to perform this last step, especially for the Web.

Fortunately, there are tools to help make this easier, and Photoshop's "Save for Web" is one of the best.

But...you might also want to consider not only hiring somebody to prepare your photos for you, but to take them as well. Photography is a craft like any other. It's one that anybody with a modicum of time and dedication can learn and do at least reasonably well...but it does take that investment of time and effort.

Somebody who's made that investment is going to do a much better job at presenting your products in the best possible light -- and, don't forget, if you're selling things on the Internet, those photos are the primary experience your customers have of your product before they buy. Your product photography is probably the single most important aspect of your advertising efforts. And, unless you've already got a well-established customer base and you aren't looking to expand, nothing is more important to Internet sales than advertising (which most emphatically does not mean merely purchasing banner advertisements).

If budget is a concern, contact the local college / university / art school and hire a student majoring in photography to do the work. They'll appreciate the chance to build their portfolios and gain work experience, and they'll also have passion and artistic experience (and hopefully talent) that you're not going to match yourself -- if for no other reason than that you should be busy with all the other important stuff of running your business.

Cheers,

b&

[BrettS]

If you do not use Photoshop, consider hiring someone to prepare them for you. 

Amen.

All comercial photography, especially product photography, is going to need at least some post-processing. Indeed, the post-processing is often more extensive than the actual shooting -- and the shooting itself can get pretty involved, what with all the lighting and other types of preparation.

The last step in any such work is optimizing the image for the final format where it'll be used. Different techniques are necessary for printing in a catalog, making a billboard, or posting on the Web. Even if you magically got the image perfect in the camera, you'd still have to perform this last step, especially for the Web.

Fortunately, there are tools to help make this easier, and Photoshop's "Save for Web" is one of the best.

But...you might also want to consider not only hiring somebody to prepare your photos for you, but to take them as well. Photography is a craft like any other. It's one that anybody with a modicum of time and dedication can learn and do at least reasonably well...but it does take that investment of time and effort.

Somebody who's made that investment is going to do a much better job at presenting your products in the best possible light -- and, don't forget, if you're selling things on the Internet, those photos are the primary experience your customers have of your product before they buy. Your product photography is probably the single most important aspect of your advertising efforts. And, unless you've already got a well-established customer base and you aren't looking to expand, nothing is more important to Internet sales than advertising (which most emphatically does not mean merely purchasing banner advertisements).

If budget is a concern, contact the local college / university / art school and hire a student majoring in photography to do the work. They'll appreciate the chance to build their portfolios and gain work experience, and they'll also have passion and artistic experience (and hopefully talent) that you're not going to match yourself -- if for no other reason than that you should be busy with all the other important stuff of running your business.

Cheers,

b&

+1

[LewisShermer]

Is it acceptable to just "facepalm"?

If your "job" is at stake shouldn't you know how to do your actual job?

Take your images at whatever size you like. Large Raw will do...

open your image in photoshop, process the raw to your liking and then open it. post process anything that needs post processing. I usually find that the levels need a bit of play, maybe the curves if you're that way inclined and any airbrushing/sharpening/high-pass etc...

save the original, then image > image size > 72dpi and whatever physical size you want it to appear on your web page. measure it in pixels/cm/mm/picas... whatever then when you get the option in save as... save the quality as 10/11/12, it really doesn't matter after that.

Here I am, drunk on a tuesday night at 01:32am and I probably have to do that about 1000 times tomorrow... don't tell my boss.

[cayenne]

With what the others have said...

What Post Processing tools do you have? DPP? Adobe (Photoshop and/or Lightroom), Aperture 3 (Mac)....?

What tools do you have at your disposal to use to process the images you've taken already?

As the others have mentioned, take your RAW images and work from there....

HTH,

cayenne

[bseitz234]

Here I am, drunk on a tuesday night ... don't tell my boss.

Amen to that. Except it's not that late here...

[TrumpetPower!]

Is it acceptable to just "facepalm"?

If your "job" is at stake shouldn't you know how to do your actual job?

Thanks to an overwhelming number of very pervasive and persuasive marketing campaigns by all the camera manufacturers, a great many people think that there's no more to photography than pointing the camera in the right direction and pressing the button.

I'm guessing that yoldashh has just discovered that the advertisements might have exaggerating things just a wee bit.

We see the same thing everywhere. I still remember all the people who got a computer with WordPerfect on it and a laser printer who thought they could use it do to all their graphic design. I know accountants who still don't have an intuitive grasp on the limits of Microsoft Excel and why they need relational databases running on high-powered servers with lots of custom software, why they can't just do it all with some "simple" macros. And the number of people who yak on the phone (or text!) while driving shows how few understand just how much kinetic energy is in a two-ton vehicle moving at 100 kph / 65 mph -- about as much as a stick of dynamite, in fact.

Cheers,

b&

[photo212]

Hello all,and thanks for your time.i will be grateful if you help me with tis serious problem.
i have con 6 d and 17-40mm lens.
i take my carpets photos with this camera and happy with the results but only problem is the image size is too large like 10 mb in jpeg format.i always shoot jpeg and raw.
now 10 mb jpeg is too big for my website photos.my competitor www.carpetvista.com has almost same pixels but their size is maximum 400 kb .please vist that site and see it.
my questions are as follows,
1 what size should i put in my canon 6d .L M or S ?
what i think is that i can shoot L but later can reduce the size .am i right ?L size giving me jpeg size 10 mb maximum.
Please please help me sort out my problem as my job is at stake .
Many thanks in advance.
Kind regards

Adjust your image size in the camera for JPEG: probably S2 or S3
Save all the processing for when you need to do so on the RAW image.

[yoldashh]

Hello all,and thanks for your time.i will be grateful if you help me with tis serious problem.
i have con 6 d and 17-40mm lens.
i take my carpets photos with this camera and happy with the results but only problem is the image size is too large like 10 mb in jpeg format.i always shoot jpeg and raw.
now 10 mb jpeg is too big for my website photos.my competitor www.carpetvista.com has almost same pixels but their size is maximum 400 kb .please vist that site and see it.
my questions are as follows,
1 what size should i put in my canon 6d .L M or S ?
what i think is that i can shoot L but later can reduce the size .am i right ?L size giving me jpeg size 10 mb maximum.
Please please help me sort out my problem as my job is at stake .
Many thanks in advance.
Kind regards

Adjust your image size in the camera for JPEG: probably S2 or S3
Save all the processing for when you need to do so on the RAW image.

thanks very much for the info.
My images look great when i take photos in Raw in L size.My concern is if i take S size ,will my images show less detail even before post processing?
thanks

[expatinasia]

I am not sure why some people are recommending Photoshop, that has quite a large learning curve and is overkill for what you need, plus extremely expensive.

DPP came with your camera, just use that to edit your pics a little bit and you can choose the size and everything from there. DPP is much easier to use than Photoshop and will save you a lot of time.

[rambarra]

put the raw image on for dem pixelpeepers to check
r

[photo212]

Hello all,and thanks for your time.i will be grateful if you help me with tis serious problem.
i have con 6 d and 17-40mm lens.
i take my carpets photos with this camera and happy with the results but only problem is the image size is too large like 10 mb in jpeg format.i always shoot jpeg and raw.
now 10 mb jpeg is too big for my website photos.my competitor www.carpetvista.com has almost same pixels but their size is maximum 400 kb .please vist that site and see it.
my questions are as follows,
1 what size should i put in my canon 6d .L M or S ?
what i think is that i can shoot L but later can reduce the size .am i right ?L size giving me jpeg size 10 mb maximum.
Please please help me sort out my problem as my job is at stake .
Many thanks in advance.
Kind regards

Adjust your image size in the camera for JPEG: probably S2 or S3
Save all the processing for when you need to do so on the RAW image.

thanks very much for the info.
My images look great when i take photos in Raw in L size.My concern is if i take S size ,will my images show less detail even before post processing?
thanks

If you allow the browser to scale the image to fit the window, you are losing detail. There is no magic solution.  However, the smaller images will appear more in focus.

Take a set of images with RAW+S2 and compare them. There is no other way for you to decide. JPEGs are a lossy format. Each save means more loss of information. Minimizing the number of saves you need to perform is best. Straight from the camera is ideal. This is one reason Canon provides multiple sizes rather than force everyone to pop open PS to resize images. Some will still prefer to shoot exclusively RAW and make all edits in a lossless format, then make one save to JPEG.

The only ones who will tell a difference are a few photographers, and I do not imagine they are visiting your website.