Minimizing JPEG File Size 289JPEGMinimizing JPEG File SizeWeb Design in a Nutshell, eMatter EditionYou may also use a selection tool to apply the blur to just those areas of your
image in which fine detail is not important, such as a sky or a curtain behind the
main subject. When you run the image through JPEG compression, it can store
those areas with the minimum amount of information, and you’re the one that’s
made the decision of which details to sacrifice.
Using Macromedia Fireworks 1.0
Fireworks provides a “smoothing” prefilter in its JPEG Export Preview dialog box.
The smoothing filter blurs hard edges across the whole image. Select the amount
of smoothing on a scale of 1 to 8, with the higher numbers producing more blur-
ring and potentially smaller files.
Using HVS JPEG plug-in
Once again, HVS JPEG offers functionality you can’t get anywhere else. The Edge-
Preserving Detail Filter (in the upper-left corner of the dialog box shown in
Figure 15-1) smoothes out texture detail while working to maintain the edges. This
results in higher compression with better overall image quality and without edge
artifacts.
If you have an image that has a lot of detail, position the Detail slider towards the
left. If your image is soft, you can slide the Detail slider to the right for a more
aggressive application of the prefilter. Note that if either of the edge-preserving
sliders is positioned all the way to the left, no prefilter will be applied.
Figure 15-1: HVS JPEG dialog box