Why are my images saved in Photoshop CS3 so large?

Question

I have taken a screen capture, pasted it into a "new" image in CS3 and cropped it down to 800 X 522 pixels. What I can't figure out is why the hell I can't get it under a 2 Mb file on my computer. Even when I save it at as level 3 JPEG it's still over 2 Mb. The file size is what I'm seeing in my documents folder. Photoshop insists its a 3.8 Mb file!!! Hell even the pixel dimensions suggests its only 1.19 Mb. What is going on?

Answer 1

I was not able to reproduce your results by following your steps, are you sure you are resizing the image and not just the canvas? Photoshop also shows a different "space" usage when working with images. It shows the amount of memory being used and not the actual file size on disk.

Here are the steps I took and the results I found

1. Take Screenshot
2. New image
3. Saved image (quality 12 - file size 534kB)
4. Image->image size
5. Provide new size
6. Saved new image (quality - file size 224kB)

Answer 2

2Mb sounds about right for a Photoshop PSD file of that size, but not for a JPEG. I've just reproduced the same thing in CS3 (on Windows 7) and I'm getting a JPG around 60Kb in size, depending on the contents of the image. Here's exactly what I'm doing:

1. Take a full screen shot and copy to the clipboard.

2. Start Photoshop CS3. File > New... to create a new image. Accept the default image settings: the dimensions should be set to the size of the clipboard contents.

3. Edit > Paste to paste the screenshot in as a new layer.

4. Use the crop tool to crop to the approximate dimensions you specified (in fact, mine is a little bigger: 912 x 557px).

5. File > Save for Web & Devices... to export as a JPEG with the required settings. (I'm choosing JPEG, Very High quality, Progressive).

The JPEG comes out around 60Kb in size. If I drop the JPEG quality to Medium (30), the size drops to around 13Kb. If I choose File > Save... and choose a level 3 JPEG, it's about 33Kb. And as a PSD, it's around 2Mb.

I can't see why your JPEG would be coming out so big. I wondered if you were doing File > Save... and saving as a PSD but with a .jpg filename, but your comment about saving as a level 3 JPEG would suggest that's not the case.

Answer 3

Given that the issue isn't reproducible by other folks, I'd guess you need to reset your Photoshop preferences. That's generally the next thing to try if closing and reopening PS doesn't clear some weird glitch.

In case you're not familiar: hold down Ctl-Alt-Shift/Cmd-Opt-Shift while the program is starting to get the "Delete Preferences" dialog. It won't toast your custom kbsc's or workspaces, but it will reset your recently used files, character settings, etc. to defaults.