Saving much smaller than the original?

[spaceman18]

Complete newbie Im afraid.
Ive just been straightening some horizons, but when I save, why is the file suddenly so much smaller? For example, original 3.5mb, saved simply post levelling.....0.9mb?
Thanks in advance

[LeviFiction]

Two reasons actually.

1) PSP employs a JPG encoder that does a decent job of maintaining quality of an image at much smaller sizes. Usually large JPGs use very small compression so that they retain more pixel information. PSP's encoder sometimes manages smaller sizes even at small compression settings.

Smaller compression values result in larger images, larger compression values result in smaller images but loss of quality. PSP's encoder attempts to balance that out giving you decent quality at smaller sizes.

2) The save command inside of PSP has a default set compression level. At least it does in PSPX6. This is usually a higher than normal compression setting. So it makes the file sometimes half-the original size sometimes even smaller. It depends on the image.

To make sure that PSP saves with a small compression value you need to use SaveAs and not Save.

When the Save As dialog opens you'll see a button to adjust the "Options." Click on that and set the compression level between 1 and 5 for a high-quality low compression setting.

SaveAs has the benefit if letting you save the image to a new file in case the quality doesn't turn out like you had hoped and you can try re-saving again.

It's also always a good idea to make sure you're using the auto-preserve feature. When you first save an image in PSP it'll ask you if you want to use Auto-preserve. Always say yes. This makes a backup copy of your image for you just in case you accidentally save a change you didn't mean to save.

If you said 'no' when it asked to turn auto-preserve on you can change your mind later and turn it on from the general preferences dialog.

File -> Preferences -> General Program Preferences.

Select "Auto-preserve" from the left-hand column of options. Then select 'Enable Auto-Preserve'.

[spaceman18]

Thats very, very helpful.
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply.
Thanks, Ben

[hartpaul]

And also make sure you only work on a copy of your original images which should also be backed up on an external drive you can move away from your computer.
Copy the files you want to work on into another folder that is easily found and work on the copies.

[freekey]

Why don't X6 let user set the default custom compression level on its own? Isn't that better.

Really hope that Corel can give some service update about this. Coz I believe some amount of details would be loss by the default compression.

And I don't want to keep backup.

Thank you.