As with other
pieces of compression software, ProJPEG lets you manually set
the quality and smoothing settings of the image, or you can enter
in a target file size and let ProJPEG do the work for you. It
can take five or six seconds for the software to work through
a process of trial and error to achieve your target size, but
it always finds it. In the example above, for example, I gave
ProJPEG a target size of 12 KB, and it came back to me with a
quality setting of 36. Pretty simple.
One of the
rarer features of ProJPEG is its ability to apply smoothing to
the foreground, background or both. You can mask off foreground
areas of the image and apply smoothing settings to the background
areas for best image quality and compression. Pretty fancy.
It also has
options for Huffman code optimization, better image sampling and
progressive display. Plus, you can save your settings to use over
and over.
How well does
it work?
ProJPEG
actually does what it says in that it brings a new level of compression
to Photoshop with the convenience of a file format filter. In
other words, no secondary program required. Contrary to its advertised
virtues, it does not compress better than Macromedia Fireworks.
Let's take a look at a couple of examples that represent pretty
well my overall experience with ProJPEG.
|
Original
Image: 316 KB PSD File
|
Original
Image: 360 KB PSD File |
Photoshop
JPEG
Quality: 6 (out of 12)
File Size: 40 KB |
Photoshop
JPEG
Quality: 6 (out of 12)
File Size: 72 KB |
BoxTop
ProJPEG
Quality: 69 (out of 100)
File Size: 28 KB |
BoxTop
ProJPEG
Quality: 69 (out of 100)
File Size: 52 KB |
Macromedia
Fireworks JPEG
Quality: 69 (out of 100)
File Size: 20 KB |
Macromedia
Fireworks JPEG
Quality: 69 (out of 100)
File Size: 40 KB |
We gave Photoshop
6 the benefit of the doubt by cranking down its quality to 6 (out
of 12, or 50 percent). Macromedia Fireworks and BoxTop ProJPEG
each used 69 percent quality with no smoothing. Each did much,
much better than Photoshop alone, but, in the end, Fireworks came
out ahead. In terms of fidelity, the final images that came from
ProJPEG and Fireworks were indistinguishable from one another.
They both do a great job of saving space while maintaining quality.
The bottom
line
So what's the verdict on ProJPEG? If you use Photoshop and ImageReady
for Web graphics, get this program. It'll cut your file sizes
in half, which can only benefit your viewers. If you use Fireworks
3 or 4, you're probably not going to see a benefit from ProJPEG,
unless you'd just like to save JPEGs directly from Photoshop without
having to take them into Fireworks for compression later. So the
final recommendation for Photoshop users who don't want to purchase
Fireworks is "Buy."
For more information
or to download a demo version of ProJPEG, visit http://www.boxtopsoft.com.
