How do you get maximum jpg quality/smallest size for photographers

Question

I would love to get any input from another photographer (or
anyone else). About specific tips for maximum jpg quality in my 20
page pdf portfolio. What file pixel dimensions do you use? What
quality levels in photoshop "save fer web" before importing into
illusrator for type and coversion to pdf. Or do you do it all in
photoshop. Color spaces? Noise reduction? file format before import
into illustrator.
All these and anything else you care to pass on. Failing
that, any recommendations on where to find a tutorial that
addresses same?
Perhaps this would be a great topic for and article at
acrobat.com.

Answer 1

David is right, this is really a topic for the other forums.
However, I can offer some basic advice from my experience as a
photographer, blogger and person who uses Acrobat.com and other
sites to post photos.
The first important point is that the monitor resolution is
typically 72 dpi. If you are saving to show as a JPG in a web page,
for example (not embedded in a PDF), setting the dpi larger than
this is problematic - the image will just appear larger. If you are
embedding in a PDF for printing, the image should match the dpi of
the document - usually 300 dpi, although it varies, else the
program (Acrobat, for example) will have to scale the photo in a
way you can't necessarily control.
When I am exporting files from Photoshop (or, more
frequently, Lightroom), I usually set the resolution to 72 dpi and
then use 100x the size of the print. For example, a photo with an
aspect ratio of 4x5 will be 400x500 pixels. I've found that this
creates an image (some panoramics excepted) that tends to 'fit' in
most monitors and is large enough to contain good detail.
Color space: Adobe1998. I believe that PDF will attempt to
either render the image in its current color space, or translate
it, but Adobe1998 is pretty ubiquitous and has worked for me
(unless you need CMYK or something else specific).
The larger issue is that the JPG compression is dependent on
the nature of the photograph. Some photos are fine at 60%, some
halo miserably. So you'd have to do it manually for each to be
absolutely sure. However, most of the time I export at 60%
compression, 72dpi and I'm OK. But I am usually not producing a
saleable print or a portfolio piece that has to look perfect. I
just want it to look as good as possible on a computer screen while
still being able to automate. TIFF avoids all that, but there's no
compression and the image is huge, as you know.
Since you are producing a PDF, you could try a side-by-side
test. Do it once with TIFFs at 300 dpi and once with 80% JPGs. This
test will exercise whether the rescaled PDF (with 300dpi) renders
as well as a 72dpi PDF with JPGs on your screen.
The final advice I'd give is to examine how small a file you
really want. With Acrobat.com's Share application, giving people
access to a large PDF is no longer a problem - you don't have to
email it, which is where it typically gets blocked due to file
size. To be sure, 20 TIFFs taken with a decent camera (8MP+) is
going to create an unduly large file, but the same images as 80%
JPGs will probably get you what you need. If won't be a small PDF,
but it won't be 50MB either.
As you are also probably aware, many of the social networking
sites that have photo applications automatically rescale photos or
do other side-processing to ease the load. Clearly, that doesn't
work for a professional photographer.
Hope this helps, I'll subscribe to the topic if follow up is
needed. But as has been mentioned, the forums for the other
products are probably the place where you'll get more detailed
advice than I can provide.