Tried another using this HD trial thing and find there's more here than meets the eye.  Need to go to screenshot editing boot camp or find a suitable "dummies' volume.  My $13.95 Carenado 182RG.                     

Rocket_Bird wrote on Dec 15^th, 2009 at 9:46pm:
Take a look at 'mictheslik's post in this thread - "HD".  Absolutely pinpoint perfect and that's what got me going.  My program of choice has been Paint.Net and it turns out fairly decent shots but squeezing them down to 150K is torture on the image quality - basically throwing out pixels you really need.  Then I look at some of the shots on the forum and see the difference in image quality - not talking artistic or any of that.  Theirs simply look like they have more pixels in their 150Kb than I ever have.  Obviously something I'm missing.  By the way that trial download is at www.hdrsoft.com but the final asking price is $55 .  Took a look at your 767 shots - very nice.  How do you handle jaggies? - been trying some blur with the image blown up but suspect there's a better way.  

I post all my shots 800kb wide.
That way I both achieve excellent quality and can see the whole shot without scrolling 

olderndirt wrote on Dec 16^th, 2009 at 11:41am:

Photoshop should have a "Save for Web" feature which will display the file size of the saved image when saved in JPEG format.

HDR (High Dynamic Range imaging) is a specific process. It involves editing the image so would not qualify as a standard screenshot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging
I believe there's freeware software for creating HDR images if you want to try it.

I recently tested a number of graphics editors to find which ones worked best for resizing & saving screenshots for posting on the forum. See this topic. http://205.252.250.26/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1260217726
I found GIMP gives as good, if not better, results than Photoshop Elements 6.0. BDSizer was developed specifically for resizing/saving images for posting on the Internet. Once it's set up the way you want it everything is automatic. You might like to try it. http://www.snapfiles.com/get/bdsizer.html

All have a Save for Web or similar feature. They all gave much the same results but as with most software it all depends on how you set them up. First of all experiment with the different resizing options to see which gives the best quality. Then try the different Save options to reduce the file size without affecting the quality. You don't need to save EXIF data on images you post in the forum so disable that option. That will save you a few precious Kb. Try the Progressive option to see if that makes a difference.

A lot will depend on the image itself. For example; a single aircraft shot against a clear blue sky will be far less graphics intensive than the same aircraft with a complex scenery background. Some colours like green are far more graphics intensive than others.

Okay, I just 'Gimped' the same shot - not as dramatic as the HDR but better than the Paint.Net - the 'white on white' adjustment really soups up the color.                     

the 2nd one does look much, much better, cleaner and brighter.

I use the "save for web" option in Photoshop

Hagar wrote on Dec 16^th, 2009 at 12:07pm:

Hagar wrote on Dec 17^th, 2009 at 4:30am: