Photoshop Creative

I admit that I suffer from obsessing about "file storage size". I am guilty of deleting too many files from my archives in an attempt to constantly monitor "free space" on my drives. I realize this is a result of starting my adventure with computers back in the days of the very first IBM PC when everything had to fit on a floppy. Even though I have almost a tertabyte of file storage memory, I can't escape the irrational quest to reduce storage space in use.

I am really puzzled by the differences in file size that I see in the templates posted here. I looked at six of the most recent templates posted here. Every one of them is 12 x 12 @ 300ppi and has a pixel dimension of 37.1MB.

The number of layers in the templates doesn't seem to make a difference. Consider these 3 which each have 9 layers:
#128 -- file size 3.70 MB
#127 -- file size 60.5 MB
#125 -- file size 3.98 MB

These both have 8 layers:
#126 -- file size 11.5 MB
#124 -- file size 79.6 MB

#121 has 14 layers and a file size of 55.0 MB

I am at a loss to try to understand what causes three of these to be such monster files when the others are relatively byte misers.

Rusty

Rusty, I had no idea that was the case. I'll follow this thread to see the answer.

I have wondered the same thing myself. I never seem to be able to get my templates small. One thing you can look at in those examples, is there any text that is not simplified? That was one suggestion made to me to help get sizes down. I doubt I can find it now, but a couple years ago I asked this same question and got several responses from forum members.

Courtney

great thread , i do not get it either. Mine are always huge.

Thanks for not pointing out that all those big templates were mine.

One of them, can't recall which one, was actually over 100 meg at one point.

I think what's happening is that I like to include some kind of texture or background image, which gets sized up to 3600x3600 and gains bulk in the process. I suspect that there are things I could do to make the images smaller, but I don't know what impact they might have on quality if someone wanted to print them. I can also recall that adding effects to the frames in 121 bulked it up big time, so I took a different direction.

Another factor may be that I'm using PSE7, which may not be as efficient at creating .psds as the full Photoshop package is. Someone with Photoshop could try opening one and then saving it with a different name and comparing sizes to see if PSE7 is the culprit.

I started out computing on a Timex/Sinclair - I think it had 2 k of ram, and used a Commodore 64 for years. I know what you mean about being programmed to save space - I still take all the double spaces out of text documents to save a few bytes.

It is puzzling, Irv.

I know from experience that color makes a big difference. I can take a Jpeg file in color, convert to B&W and save as a different file. The B&W version will be considerably smaller than the color file.

I took your #124 and simply deleted the colored, textured background. When saved the file size changed from 79.6 to 22.3 MB. That's obviously a big part of why that file is so big but, 22.3MB is still considerably larger than all the others in my sample.

I took that same #124 where most of the layers had not been simplified. I simplified all and saved. Didn't make a bit of difference, the file size was 79.6 MB for each version.

I'm not going to lose sleep over it. It's just enough of a difference to make me wonder. I doubt that the PSE version has anything to do with it (I am using PSE7).

I guess it's like the Trinity ... It's a Mystery.

Rusty

That's conclusive for my theory about those backgrounds, then. They start out as .jpgs, less than 4 meg. So they are getting upsized and (I suspect) converted to a bitmap, which makes them huge.

...and I'd say the Trinity is a mystery of a totally different scale.

I seem to recall that Tim Grey answered a similar question on his DDQ web site a while back. I believe his answer was all about the amount of information in a particular file. Like RAW=big file and compressed JPEG=
small file. When i made a comparison of sizes of photos, I was amazed that the pano made up of three captures was larger than the pano made from two smaller panos(four photos) combined into one. Go figure......
Chas

The colors used for the different does make a difference in size and so does the textured backgrounds. If you notice from the ones you have listed, mine and Irv's, when I do a template I use white and gray shades. Basically muted colors as opposed to a bright red or dark blue unless maybe they are a small shape. Other factors can be the text and if someone uses an actual element like a frame as opposed to just creating a frame using shapes or if your using a vector shape/file in the template.

that's why some of mine is so big. thanks all.