ProJPEG
by BoxTop Software Inc.
http://www.boxtopsoft.com/
$49.95
(upgrade) $19.95

Review by Gary Coyne

Anyone who's used the web has encountered pages with photographs that seemed to take forever to download. This is because the person who placed those photographs on the page probably didn't know that photo's can be compressed via JPEG compression. The greater the compression, the faster the photo will download to the browser's window, the happier the web surfer is, the more likely the surfer will hang around a site to explore.

The basic concept of JPEG compression is that when a picture is saved, every pixel has all the red, green, and blue data--even if that particular pixel is white. What JPEG compression does is remove all the unnecessary data leaving only what is necessary for that photo to appear acceptable on the screen. (This last point is important, because compressed JPEG photos print badly--thus, when compressing a JPEG photo, save the original for printing purposes and use the compressed one for placing on the web.)

For testing ProJPEG, I used one of my trusty friends: one of my two corgis, Pixie. The image used is 450 x 338 pixels, and, when saved as a Photoshop document, was 456k:

The picture above was compressed in Photoshop 5.5 using the "Save for Web" feature and saved at 40% compression and is 23.77k. It should download to a browser via a 28K baud modem in about 9 seconds. (The calculated seconds are purely conjecture because of line noise and connection variations, and are provided by Adobe, ProJPEG, and all other JPEG compression programs as a guideline to provide the user some idea of what to expect.)

The exact amount of compression to use is very subjective. If one uses too much compression, strange artifacts start appearing on the page that can severely damage the image quality. This can be seen in the image below, which is a close up of Pixie's left front paw:

Image #1 is a 200% image of the 40% compression (below #1 is a 100% image). Image #2 is the same image but using 20% compression. You can just start to see some white floaty images to the right of the knee. In image #3, taken at 10% compression, you can easily see some material to the right of the knee and can also easily see the material in the bottom, non-magnified image. If you look around the web, it is common to see this; you can find it particularly when a solid dark object is next to a light image--like a pole next to the sky or glasses on a face. Finding the best optimization is an objective analysis of the size of the picture versus the quality.

ProJPEG (once installed by dropping it into the Photoshop Plug-in folder) shows up as one of the formats to select from in either the "Save" or "Save as..." in the File menu of PhotoShop on both Mac and PC, and Paint Shop Pro on the PC. Once selected, the ProJPEG window comes up. (The following graphic is saved as a gif to optimize the flat colors of ProJPEG's window sacrificing the quality of the photos of Pixie in the original and the optimized views.):

On the left, one sees the original picture and on the right the optimized view. One can zoom in or out via the + or - buttons on the left side of the window. To the right of these windows, the optimized file size, the ratio of the compression, and the calculated time for downloading are presented. (You can select the speed used for calculation in the drop-down menu on the top right.) By either moving the slider or typing in a number, one can vary the "Quality" or the "Smoothing" (more on that later).

One can save any setting for future reuse; otherwise the settings remain the same from the previous use.

The same original picture of Pixie was saved via ProJPEG at 40% and 0% Smoothing and appears below:

This time the picture is 15.13k and should download in 4 seconds on a 28k modem. That's a savings of 8.64k. That's significant. But wait: there's more. If you look at the ProJPEG window above, you will note on the bottom right three radio buttons: Apply Smoothing to () both, () front, and () back. If within Photoshop you set up an alpha channel mask (on this picture I used the magic wand on the pavement and all shadows) and then clicked on the "Edit in Quick Mask mode" button. Then in ProJPEG, I applied smoothing to the areas that do not need detail. This was done with a 90% smoothing on the picture below:

This picture is now 14.14k and should download in 4 seconds at 28k baud. The only thing you can really observe is that the pavement is blurred. However, since the object of the picture is the dog, there is no real loss. This photo is now 9.63k smaller than what Photoshop provided; that's 41% smaller and a savings of 5 (calculated) seconds.

ProJPEG is a good addition to Photoshop, but there are a few limitations. For one thing, ProJPEG is completely non-functional when using the "Smart Photoshop" feature in Adobe GoLive (live updates for any changes in a photo from within GoLive). Photoshop provides up to three windows for reviewing settings for quality versus size (including a screen for the original) while ProJPEG provides only one. Fortunately, the window showing the compressed photo is totally wysiwyg and dynamically changes as you change any attribute. It would be nice if one had the ability to change the size of these windows.

The documentation is a pdf that limits its explanation to what the features do/are and are weak on how to use them. In addition to the pdf, there are some SimpleText documents with material that should have been in the Manual.pdf. The program isn't that hard to hack through, but the documentation should be more organized. As it is, you need to read through one pdf manual and three SimpleText documents.

Finally, you cannot test for best optimization between gifs and jpegs. (BoxTop Software also sells a comparable item called PhotoGIF which was unavailable for testing, but I don't believe there is the ability to go back and forth between the two as one can alternate between gif and jpeg testing in Photoshops "Save for Web..." feature.)

Although the price is a tad high for the occasional user, for the professional who wants to provide to his/her web client the best possible, most optimized site, ProJPEG is worth the money.

Applelinks Rating

October 07, 2008