RAW to jpeg, ending up with SMALL files

[elnoralouisa]

I recently took the plunge from jpeg to RAW, and unless there is an easy

answer, I will be going back to jpeg today. I did a whole series of pictures

in RAW a few weeks ago, RAW files were about 12.2 in size. I opened them in

Bridge in CS3, processed them, saved them at a maximum setting of 12, and most

came out at about 4-5 mb with some cropping. That's fine!

 

I do a portrait session this weekend, worked on the pictures today. The RAW

files once again 12.2 or so in size, I do whatever in ACR, save them to jpeg,

at a maximum setting of 12, and without any cropping, my files are like 1.2mb

or less! Some of them with some cropping are way down to 750mb. I can get

4x6's from these, but some of them that is all I can get!

 

I have looked at my setting in CS3, and Bridge, and just can't find anything

that would have changed. Where on earth am I losing all my data at? I just

tried taking a picture that was in RAW, and doing absolutely nothing to it,

saving it in ACR, and it's down to 1.2

 

Hoping this is just something stupid I am doing. I am new to RAW, but have

heard this was the way to go. Well, at least in jpeg, my data didn't

disappear on me.

 

Help!

 

Debbie

[rickvandenberg]

ACR has a setting, at the bottom of the screen, that lets you resize the image to varying degrees as part of the conversion. Check that you haven't told ACR to change the resolution to something smaller than normal.

[JosvanEekelen]

You did not mention the kind of pictures you took. JPG is a compressed format. If for instance your portrait session was done with a uniformly lit and coloured background this will compress fairly well, resulting in a smaller filesize than for instance a landscape picture with lots of fine detail. And as the previous poster mentioned, check the settings.

[brucecyr]

Debbie,

 

You can demonstrate Jos van Eekelen's point to yourself by taking, compressing, and comparing the lengths of two RAW images. One of them should be a bare, monochrome wall with as little detail as possible, and the other should be some very busy wall. The sections of wall you photograph don't have to be the same size -- the bare monochrome section might be very small.

 

But more importantly, if you're not doing anything with your RAW images except compressing them down to JPEG size, then it doesn't make much sense to shoot in RAW -- just go back to JPEG.

 

The point of shooting in RAW is to provide maximum manipulative flexibility in editing the file.

[brucecyr]

Durn my hide!

 

Instead of "compressing", I meant to say "converting to JPEG".

[robert_martin5]

Debbie, look at the pixel dimensions rather than the file size. As the previous poster said the compression you get with a JPG file is a function of the image content - the number of pixels does not change when compressing the image. The detail in the image is a function of the number of pixels your image contains. You can change the number of pixels in the RAW converter (just below the image) and if you changed this from what RAW file contains it will affect the image detail. If it has changed, just change it back and you can output an image with all the detail available from the camera. The camera always saves a RAW file with full detail and you can't change the RAW file.

 

When you process a RAW file to output another format (JPG, TIF, etc) you are only changing the parameters the RAW converter uses to process the file and you can change these to something else at any time and process it again and again.

[elnoralouisa]

Ok,it was the setting at the bottom of the converter. I must have changed it somewhere, somehow. What I meant by I wasn't doing anything with the pictures, was just one picture as a test. Of course, I am actually playing with my pictures, but didn't want people to say that was why I was getting smaller pics, so my test pic was just in and out.

Next question, I changed it to the medium setting, but now it looks like I have to change it for every picture. How do I get it to change permanently to like the middle setting for size? I went in and out of bridge, and still it went back to the least setting on the bottom?

At least I know I can re-size the pictures I already did. It was for a Senior, and she hates having her pictures done. If I had to tell her we had to re-do them, she would go off the deep end.