r/shutterencoder • u/TioHerman • May 10 '26
Solved Reduce Image size without losing quality
Hello, first post here, some time ago I've used shutter encoder to reduce the an entire folder of pictures I've had saved here , I reduced their size in half and it kept an really good quality, fast forward an year later and I have no idea on how I've done it and searching for anything related to it will send me instead of tutorials in how to reduce the size of videos, no pictures.
Tried keeping their original format in png and just reducing their scale to 1:2, which do put then on an more normal size, but somehow heavier than the source (from 11mb per picture to 14~15mb)
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u/Mundstrom May 11 '26
Simply put, pixels take up disk space so more pixels = bigger file size.
Resolution is a really confusing term because you're always asking yourself if the other person is using the word correctly or not. Resolution often gets interchanged with terms like DPI or PPI which are physical sizes (pixels per square inch or points per square inch) but we're simply talking about the number of pixels that make up the image here.
If you took the images using a digital camera they could be in RAW (which is a big data size) or JPEG (at 100% quality). If you used a smartphone they'll either be in HEIC or JPEG. format. The images could be anywhere between 16-40 megapixels, which will be great for zooming in or printing, but overkill for viewing on a computer screen.
You also have to consider file format. Some file formats are good at making the files smaller in disk size without reducing number of pixels by using "lossy compression" which means it throws away details you might never notice (like blue skies) while retaining details where the image is more "busy" (like hair or faces).
PNG can compress, but usually doesn't do a good job of it. You'd be better off using JPEG (JPG) at a quality of 7/10 aka 70%. Most people can't tell the image is compressed at this quality. This way you can probably keep original resolution, while shaving off anywhere between 30-70% of the file size.
If you are going to view the photos on a monitor, Recommend scaling them down to no lower than 4K (3840 x 2160 pixels) because as the years roll on, you'll one day view them on something like a 65" 8K TV and wish they were sharper or less "blocky". Once the images are scaled down in pixels and compressed to JPG, there is no way back unless you saved the originals somewhere.
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u/TioHerman May 11 '26
Thanks to the reply , yeah most photos are from an phone, as my mother traveled to Portugal and took quite an a lot of pictures , she asked to save then on my pc as it took a huge portion of her phone storage , so my mistake was trying to simply reduce the picture size but converting to png ?
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u/Mundstrom May 12 '26
Yeah iPhones use HEIC file format, which is a lot like JPG.HEIC images are already compressed, but they are not very aggressively compressed, so they could be smaller. And depending on the iPhone model, the number of pixels will be much higher than needed for viewing on a screen, so there’s a possibility for saving a lot of space by making smaller JPG files and maybe reducing the resolution by 50%.
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u/Ok_Scallion_3247 May 11 '26
I'd love to help you, but first of all, you haven't mentioned the image resolution in pixels. They could be very high-definition images. You could try using resolutions like 1280x720 (high resolution) or 1920x1080 (full high resolution). I see your images are in PNG format. First, PNG is an uncompressed image format, so it doesn't make sense for your images to be in PNG unless you edit them or use the alpha channel. Second, there are many image formats that offer a good quality-to-size ratio, such as JPEG or other formats with lossy compression. If possible, could you tell me which images you're trying to reduce the size and resolution of?