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Shozam - How to maximize the quality of the images in your gallery

David Green
posted this on November 18, 2011 04:17 pm

Images are processed in order to make them "Web friendly." So, they are scaled down in pixel size and compressed so they become easier to view on a Web page.

There are options to manage and enhance the visible quality of the images in the Shozam Advanced and Shozam Business Editions:

1) The Step 2, "Other" tab lets you add add high-resolution originals

2) The Step 2, "Image" tab lets you select a new default jpeg compression to a higher quality than the default which is 60. You may want to use 70-80.

If you are a professional photographer or an advanced user, you may want to also refer to our recommended workflow post in the forums that assure getting the best possible quality from images and requires some additional steps.

Optimum Image Prep Workflow

For best workflow, in terms of speed an quality, that includes pre-processing outside of Shozam, I would batch process images (you can use ACDSee, ThumbsPlus, or any other image processor):

  • Check images are in sRGB color space (convert from Adobe RGB if need be)
  • Resize to w=753px x h=565px (this is the largest image size used in standard layouts for Large Pages) unless you want to use the "Source image" option on the Other tab in Step 2 (in which case you would resize them to whatever dimension you want to use for the Source image.
  • Sharpen images
  • Save with a very high quality JPG setting (low compression)
  • Import images in Shozam
  • Set image quality in Shozam at 70 or 80

This workflow offers the following advantages:

  • Ensures your images show more consistently with the correct coloration on various montitors/browsers (ensured by sRGB)
  • Faster Shozam processing since input files are smaller and large images do not have to be resized at all
  • Better quality images since the large images will retain your custom sharpening (since they do not get resized)

Currently, the Large images are still going through the JPG codec and saved at the quality settings specified in Shozam even if the image does not need to be scaled down. At a later date we may add an option in Shozam so the program does not touch the image if it does not need to be scaled (it would just place a copy of the original in the Large images folder of the gallery). This will allow the image to retain size, sharpening AND jpg compression settings of the original.

Bypass Shozam image processing/ Setting image file compression to 100

This article provides more information on two related topics:

  • Users who want to bypass Shozam image processing so they can do JPEG compression and image sharpening in their image editing program of choice
  • Users who want to learn more about the JPEG compression slider and what happens if they set it to 100

EXPLANATION

Shozam always processes images that it generates. You can control the file size vs. compression trade-offs in Step 5 on the Image tab for all images or in Step 2 on the Other tab on an image by image basis. Setting the slider all the way to 100 means that the program will minimize the compression of the file; the JPEG compression algorithm will provide utmost fidelity to the "original" image given. This works the same as in Adobe Photoshop when you maximize the quality of the JPEG compression (and probably the same as in your image editing program). JPEG image processing/compression has to happen each time the image is saved. Setting the slider to 100 does not mean the image will not get processed/compressed; it just means that it will compress it very little in order to achieve highest fidelity, albeit at a much larger size.

It is important to realize that if the image was already compressed for a certain file size vs. quality ratio, then setting the JPEG quality slider to 100 will only increase file size with no increase of quality. The quality of the image cannot be increased beyond that of the original, particularly if no scaling is being performed on the image.

Preventing processing of images is not typically possible at this point with Shozam but may be a feature we can consider adding at a later time (give option to not process any images that do not need to be scaled). Note that if the original image fits the size of the Large Pages but it is larger than images to fit the QuickView Pages, the images would still need to be "touched" to be scaled down for the QuickView Pages and thus processed including using the Shozam engine to do JPEG compression. So the benefit of a feature to leave "large" images alone will be limited to the Large Page images.

There are two cases by which images bypass the Shozam image processing engine:

  • Including Original images in Step 2 Options tab and deselecting any scaling option
  • If the image has already been processed and is available in the gallery and is not available any longer at the original location from where it was added into Shozam
    This means that if you desire a high degree of finesse and control over the compression and sharpening of each image, you can go into the respective folders where the images reside within the gallery file structure and redo them there. If Shozam cannot find the originals at the path it expects them to be (where they were originally added into Shozam) then the program will not touch these images any longer.