E-mailing files

[Julian Betances]

Greeetings everyone, It's around 12:00 am (CA, pacific time) and just got back from work. This is my first post so I apologize that I didn't do a search on the subject first, little tired I guess.

I just met a customer at work today who uses Photoshop 7 with a very interesting question. I told her that I would find an answer for her tonight or tomorrow morning, and for myself as well since I use version 7 too.

This is the question: Is there a way of sending a Photoshop file thru e-mail to another user without flatenning the file, that is, by keeping all the layers active and at the same time keeping the size of it reasonable to be sent?

I was thinking of compresing the file with something like Winzip, or converting it to jpeg before sending it. The thing is that the recipient would receive a fully working file available to him. So, is there a best way to do this? Appreciate any help on this, thanks.

[YrbkMgr]

If you want to keep the layers in tact, your choices are: zip it up (easiest thing to do really, depending on how big the file is), send it as a plain ole PSD, or save it as a Tiff using compression in the compression options dialog.

Of those three, there is no one best way that fits all. If you are working with a 500MB file, any of the above are too unweildy to e-mail. If you are working on a 5 or 6 meg file zipping or Tiff will probably get you close.

If you convert to JPG, you will flatten the image and lose quality (jpg is lossy compression). My personal rule of thumb is that JPG is only used as a Final Output Format - not one to be edited except as a last resort.

The only things that support layers will be Tiff or PSD, so that drives what you can do.

Peace,
Tony

[Colin Walls]

There isn't really anything better than you already figured. You could try TIFF with compression, as that will keep the layers. I'd bet that a PSD can be ZIPped to be smaller.

If they are only image layers, I suppose you could take each as a JPEG and reassemble them at the other end. That would be a hassle.

The only other comment is that email is an inefficient way to send such data. Using FTP or posting on a Web site [HTTP] is much better use of bandwidth. But, again, more hassle.

[Andrew Pietrzyk]

I was thinking of compresing the file with something like Winzip, or converting
it to jpeg before sending it. The thing is that the recipient would receive
a fully working file available to him.




Zipping layered TIFs or PSDs doesn’t compress much, JPEG doesn’t support layers.

Try Photoshop PDF, it supports layers and compression. I just don’t know how much you can reduce file size with it…I only used PS PDFs for printing not e-mail.

[YrbkMgr]

IF you use Photoshop PDF, you will still introduce lossy compression - it uses the JPG algorithm. That may or may not be an issue...

[Andrew Pietrzyk]

it uses the JPG algorithm




Or ZIP if you don’t care about file size.