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How To Reduce Image File Size On Mac?
There are two techniques to lower the size of a photograph if it is too huge. You may resize and decrease the resolution, or export it in a reduced quality. Here’s how to resize or decrease the size of a picture on a Mac.
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You don’t need a third-party software to do this on your Mac. It is possible to do this utilising the powerful, built-in Preview picture editing software.
How to Shrink a Photo by Lowering the Resolution
The quickest technique to minimise picture size is to lower photo resolution. If a website or programme has a file size restriction for photos, first try decreasing the resolution.
You may accomplish this using the Preview app for one picture at a time or for numerous photos at once. To begin, use the Finder app and go to the picture (or photos) you wish to resize. Then, to open the file in Preview, just double-click it.
To open the picture in Preview, double-click it.
If Preview is not your usual picture viewer, right-click and choose Open With > Preview (We recommend that you take some time to set Preview as the default image viewer, as it will make your life easier.).
It’s time to resize the picture now that it’s open in Preview. From the top toolbar, choose Edit (It looks like a Pen icon.). Then, from the editing choices, choose Resize (the symbol with several boxes).
Select the Edit button, and then, from the toolbar, select the Resize button.
First, choose “Pixels” from the pop-up menu. Then, reduce the width to around half of its original size (You can try out different resolutions.). Preview will immediately notify you of the image’s updated file size. When you’re satisfied with the outcome, click the “OK” button.
To resize the picture, choose Pixels and then lower the Width.
Preview will save your changes to the picture automatically, but you may manually update the image by pressing Command+s. You may now dismiss the Preview window by clicking the red Close button in the upper-right corner, or by using the Command+q keyboard shortcut.
How to Reduce Photo Size While Maintaining Quality
What if you are unable to resize the picture but still want to minimise the file size? The Preview app might also assist you in this regard. You may export a lower-quality picture in JPEG format (this function does not support PNG format, but we have a solution for it in the next section).
To begin, open the picture file in Preview. Then, from the menu bar at the top, pick “File” and then “Export.”
Navigate to the “File ” area of the menu bar and choose the “Export” option.
When you choose “JPEG” as the file format, a “Quality” slider appears. Slide the slider to the “Least” quality side to witness the file size change in real-time.
While Preview is exporting a new picture, you may adjust the photo’s name and destination from the top. When you’re satisfied with the size, press the “Save” button.
Minimize the quality of the JPEG format to reduce the picture size.
Go to the chosen folder in Finder to discover the exported picture, which is ready to use. In our tests, we were able to decrease a 371 KB PNG shot to a 52 KB JPEG image without needing to resize it or suffer considerable quality loss.
In Photoshop, create a white layer to reduce the file size.
One of the most basic and successful methods for downsizing huge files is to simply put a solid colour layer at the top of your Layers panel. Shift-Control-N will add a new layer on top, which you may fill with white by hitting Shift-F5. After that, all you have to do is save your PSD file.
As you can see, we can reduce the file size from 181 MB to 171 MB by employing this strategy. The major advantage of this approach is that it is very quick and simple to generate a solid colour layer. However, the file compression outcomes vary, thus in some circumstances, it just provides us a tiny compression while in others, it may decrease enormous files by up to 50%. It’s also vital to notify your customers about this solid colour layer since not everyone is acquainted with Photoshop and may be puzzled by seeing the document’s white canvas without any design components.
How to Reduce File Size by Making Layers Invisible
Another comparable method for reducing PSD file size is to make all layers invisible before saving. So, in the Layers panel, just uncheck all of the eye icons.
As can be seen, this strategy produces the same results as the prior one. So the advantages and disadvantages are the same.
How to Flatten Layers in Photoshop to Reduce the Size of a PSD File
Let’s try another excellent way for reducing file size. Right Click > Flatten Image on any layer. Then, all of your layers will be blended into one.
Layers are flattened. The Photoshop size reduction approach is really successful. As you can see, the file size is now 98 percent lower, but the biggest disadvantage is that you no longer have access to any of your layers and cannot alter them. So, although this is a really powerful approach, it is also rather detrimental to the structure of your PSD layers.
Reduce the size of a Photoshop file by optimising the layer structure.
Let’s have a look at another way for reducing file size without sacrificing the ability to alter important layers. There are a number of unseen texture layers in my template that aren’t utilised. Let’s hold Shift and select all of these layers before hitting the Delete button.
As you can see, dealing with huge files in Photoshop, such as painting templates, print templates, and other PSDs with a lot of components that aren’t always necessary for our particular design assignment, may result in massive file sizes. Simply removing the invisible layers that will not be utilised in the final version of the project.
