Cover Photo Size

[Caprice]

The few cover photos I've managed to do are HUGE in size - like 30 mb!  I don't have Photoshop.  What's the easiest way to compress the size of these photos for storage?? Sorry if it's a dopey question.

[PenguinPower]

That seems a bit big... mine are around 1 to 2 mb after being saved as jpgs in the newly recommended 1480x1480 resolution.

[Mariholly]

I make my montages with Corel (I'm an old school designer) and I export to PNG without any type of transparency. They weigh a few megabytes. Perhaps you should save them in more web-optimized formats that don't require high resolutions.

[chefcateringbiz]

Corel user here, too! I love Corel.

[Fiorenzo · Accepted solution]

30 MB is, indeed, a huge size for a flattened image, depending on file size and image type you use. Make your images either 2048x2048 pixels (old Z recommendation - I still use this larger size) or 1480x1480 pixels (new, smaller recommended Z size). Create them directly in pixels (image dimensions), the DPI or PPI is irrelevant (you can use any number, doesn't make any difference in our case). When you're done, save your original first in the native file format that comes with your image software, NOT flattened, with their respective layers (if your software supports these), so you always have the layered original ready for adaptations. Then flatten the content and export/save the image as a JPG. Use a low compression rate of 10% (resp. quality rate of 90%) and NO sub-sampling (if you have this option). This gives you perfect images at relatively small file sizes of maybe 2-5 MB, depending on the complexity of the picture. No need to save as a PNG, JPGs with low compression are as good with no visible artifacts at a fraction of the size.

[Caprice]

Thanks all.  In my case, the trouble was PNG vs. JPEG.  Will use jpeg from now on!