MAJOR compression change from X3 to X7 ???

[phinds]

I've been using Corel PaintShop Pro X3 since it came out and on a whim decided to upgrade to X7. For my use, I see only minor improvements from X3 to X7 but I CAN see that for some users there are significant improvements/additions.

My concern, however, is that given what I see as absolutely identical settings, the compression levels for X7 have become MUCH worse on small pics. I have compression set at 30% in both programs and "embed ICC Profile" is on in both versions. Both are set for "standard encoding" and both have "save EXIF information" turned on. I can't find any other settings that even COULD be different, much less ARE different, yet I get wildly different results on small images.

Here are some stats from an arbitrary image:

Code: Select all

                                  X3       X7
-------------------------------+--------+--------
raw image from camera          | 2648   |  2648  |
saved at 30% compression       |  827   |   971  |
saved at 600 pixels wide / 30% |   22   |    37  |
saved at 200 pixels wide / 30% |    7   |    20  |
-------------------------------------------------

The somewhat larger sizes on the bigger version are not a big problem but the TRIPLING of the size on the small version (200 pixels) is very troublesome as I have a web site with tens of thousands of small images and X7 is going to make my new files WAY bigger than they need to be.

Anyone have any idea what is going on here and whether there is a solution to this?

I can solve my issue by running a separate program to do a bulk reload/resave at 30% that I know gives about the same size as X3, but I don't see why I should have to do that. Why would X7 do such a poor job of compressing small images when X3 does a good job?

Thanks for any help.

Phinds

[LeviFiction]

Won't lie to you, this is a new one.

Most people complain that X7 saves much smaller than previous versions and that worries them.

PSP X4 introduced a new JPEG engine from previous versions. This usually resulted in smaller file sizes and the subsampling options to be screwed up. But the quality of the image was not drastically harmed. Now, as I said, usually people were worried because the files were much smaller. Not because they were too big.

Tell you what, in X7 try setting the subsampling to the opposite end of whatever you have it set to. See if that makes a difference. Like I said when X4 came out those settings got wonky. And it hasn't been fixed in X7.