How to compress images with Photoshop

The Adobe Photoshop program is the photo and image editing and design application used at a professional level. In addition to this, it can also be used for simple purposes such as, for example, compressing images without losing their quality, since it is a problem that many other programs or web platforms that offer this service present.

You can download Photoshop  from the official Adobe website or buy the disk for installation on your computer or, on the other hand, download the app for smartphones and tablets. Although for these cases, the desktop version is better.

Index(  )

  1. In what formats can you compress in Photoshop to lose less image quality?
  2. How do you compress an image from Photoshop without losing quality?
    1. Reducing the dimensions of the photo
    2. Decreasing the weight in the export window
    3. Changing the color profile
  3. How to compress your photos in Photoshop to share them online?

In what formats can you compress in Photoshop to lose less image quality?

The understanding of an image is basically to reduce its weight so that it occupies less space on our devices or if we want to upload them to a web page: Instagram, Facebook for example and they can accept them; since it usually happens that some platforms only accept a maximum weight to upload our photographs. If this is the case, we must compress it to upload it, but we run the risk that later the image will be blurred, unattractive colors, very low resolution and others.

Fortunately, Photoshop has several options, such as converting a color image to black and white , resizing, adding or removing elements, and what is interesting, compressing without losing quality. Some of the formats accepted by Photoshop to perform this action are the following:

  • JPEG or JPG:it is the default format of most of the images and photographs that we find on the web and that the cameras of our cell phones take, it will be the first option to take into account to compress an image without losing quality.
  • PNG: is the second most used format and sometimes more recommended than the previous one to avoid losing the quality of the photographs when compressing them.
  • GIF: the last format accepted by Photoshop to compress without losing quality in your images.

How do you compress an image from Photoshop without losing quality?

First of all, you must open the image with the Adobe Photoshop program because it is with this that we will work, since your computer will open it by default with Paint or the Photos application; Another way is also to open Photoshop first, we go to the top menu and in the Files tab, we click to display the submenu and then we click on “Import”.

This will open the file explorer, we look for the corresponding image and we accept so that Photoshop loads the photograph, when we already have the element in the work area, we have to go to the Files tab again and there we select “Save as” or “Save for Web” , the keyboard shortcuts are “Ctrl+S” or “Alt+Shift+Ctrl+S”, respectively. The first one is for a simple compression without loss of quality, the second one is the same, but it has more options for its configuration.

When doing the above, we will have to take into account a series of details to optimize the compression in the best way, which we will name below.

Reducing the dimensions of the photo

A high quality photo usually measures 1080x720p, this is a standard measurement and its size ranges from 1MB to 2MB ; A good way to reduce the size is by decreasing the dimensions of the image, which Photoshop allows. Remember to maintain the aspect ratio, to prevent your image from being distorted, you can do this process from the “Export” or “Save as” option.

Decreasing the weight in the export window

Another compression method is weight reduction, which is also done when you are going to export a photo; this process is a bit trickier, as you will inevitably lose some quality depending on how much weight you remove and remove JPG artifacts within Photoshop , keep in mind not to remove too much then.

Changing the color profile

Photoshop normally works with the RGB color gamut , which is the default for web pages, the more compressed the image, the simpler the gamut will still be. This process, unlike the previous ones, can be done before exporting or at the same time as doing it.

How to compress your photos in Photoshop to share them online?

If they are images that you are going to share on your social networks or in an online photo album, Photoshop has the option to save them on the web, which we have previously explained how to access this method, with the keyboard shortcut “Alt + Shift+Ctrl+S”.

Here the options will be much more varied and therefore more advanced, in addition to the fact that Photoshop will give you more additional formats in addition to those that we have already described to export your image. As you will see, it is a highly powerful design program , from simple things like making a triangle in Adobe Photoshop , to authentic works of design art.