Detailed overview of JPEGMini pro

Hello my dear readers, Luthor here! Whenever I supply high-resolution photographs to our clients or upload images to this website, I routinely extract JPEG images with a quality ranging from 70% to 85%. Although some photographers regularly extract their images at 100% quality, I rarely feel the need to do so because the file sizes balloon and the quality variances are too slight (and usually difficult to tell between) to distinguish between. Recently, an application called JPEGmini Pro, which is specifically targeted to photographers like me who are looking for a solid way to minimize file size without sacrificing image quality, caught my eye.

When sending high-resolution photographs to our clients or uploading images to this website, I usually extract JPEG files with a quality ranging from 70% to 85%. Despite the fact that some photographers regularly extract their photos in their original state, I rarely feel the need to do so because doing so causes the files to grow and the quality differences are too slight (and usually impossible) to distinguish between. I just became interested in JPEGmini Pro, an application that is specifically offered to photographers like me who are looking for a good way to reduce file size without sacrificing image quality.

When processing photos up to 50 MP in quality using all available processor cores, the Pro edition of JPEGmini varies from the standard version in that it does so at a speed that is up to 8 times faster. Additionally, you need the Pro edition if you want to directly integrate the JPEG compression engine into Lightroom.

1) Setup of JPEGmini Pro

The standard JPEGmini Pro installation procedure is straightforward. The bigger package is downloaded and installed after making a purchase and downloading the little installation file from JPEGmini's website. The instructions that follow are only for PCs, however JPEGmini works on both Macs and PCs. Please be warned that a security warning may display when you click "Install" questioning if you want to install the software or not. When you decide to do so, the downloading procedure starts.

after this, the software is ready to be used!!

2) Installing the JPEGmini Pro plugin for Lightroom

Unfortunately, Lightroom's installation process is more difficult and necessitates additional steps after it is complete. At the end of the process, you will be handed a README text file that explains how to manually install the plugin for Lightroom. I must admit that when I read the following in the README file that provides the installation instructions, I was a little taken aback.

1. Copy the jpegmini.lrplugin file to your computer's hard drive.
2. Navigate to File > Plug-in Manager in Lightroom.
3. Below the plug-in list, click the "Add" button.
4. Click "Add Plug-in" after finding the jpegmini.lrplugin on your computer's hard disk.

3) Using JPEGmini Pro

If you're using the regular version of JPEGmini Pro to optimize existing photos in your file system, simply locate the JPEG pictures on your computer and drag and drop them into the "Drop Photos Here" section of the interface, as seen in the first snapshot above. When you try to change the original photos, JPEGmini Pro will notify you. If you select "Continue," the program will review each file, recompress it, and then destroy the original. If you want to keep the originals just in case, choose "Export to Folder" from the Preferences menu by clicking the small gear icon in the top left corner of the screen before starting this process. There will be a backup of the stored files.

The Preferences box also enables you to resize photographs to a different resolution in case you need to export them to your website or another medium. You can choose "Max Width" or "Max Height" and enter the specific pixel resolution. There are a few predetermined values, including 960 x 720 (Small), 1600 x 1200 (Medium), and 2592 x 1944 (Large).

The software claimed to have decreased everything by a total of 11.79 megabytes, or 1.3x ratio, after processing 45 files totaling 56 megabytes from my Landscapes Gallery, as shown below:

I was a little skeptical about such reductions due to how enormous they are and the fact that the images were already compressed at 77 percent quality when they came out of Lightroom (which is the third quality tier from 100 percent ). Whenever I absolutely need to reduce the file size of an image, I usually utilize Phil Harvey's excellent ExifTool program. I use this application to remove superfluous information from JPEG photographs (such XMP data and built-in thumbnails), as I explained in my piece on EXIF, while maintaining the vital EXIF information for our readers to use as a reference. Because I couldn't remember if I had already done this with my files before the compression took place, I ran the original files through ExifTool once again. In reality, I already had, and as a result, the extra space savings you can see above. Just awesome, that! You might not think that reducing from 56 gigabytes to 43 is much of a problem, but I consider a space savings of about 25% for correctly optimized files to be substantial. As a result, the assets you see on this page would load 25% faster, and if I were to chose images with even higher compression levels, the potential space savings would be huge.

I started researching how JPEGmini really works after viewing the aforementioned. Given that JPEG is a widely utilized and supported format, I was aware that JPEGmini engineers did not change the JPEG standard. The "About Us" section of the business' website states that "JPEGmini is a patent-pending photo recompression technology." In essence, it is a recompression technique that looks at the existing JPEG file and tries to reduce its size even further without introducing more visible artifacts to the image. The goal of the JPEGmini software is to achieve smaller file sizes as a result.

The second experiment examined the amount of space that could be saved by utilizing full-size JPEG photos that had been retrieved with the highest level of quality. I used a Tamron 150-600mm butterfly JPEG sample that I had taken. At full size, the file was 27.939 MB large. After a brief delay, the image was compressed once more, and this is what I saw:

Wow, a single file was significantly compressed from its original size of 15.644 MB to just 11.535 MB, a reduction of over 60%. Since it didn't seem likely that the software would result in such significant space savings, I opened the JPEG image on my computer and looked at each pixel individually. I made multiple trips back and forth and didn't notice any differences in the standard. No artifacts, no forced noise reduction, and no posterization of any kind.

After scanning the file, I returned to it to see if the XMP and other metadata were still there by looking at it in an ASCII editor. There was no damage. I was able to run ExifTool on top of the compression to produce an even smaller image because the software did not alter that data. The file size decreased to 11.511 MB once I finished, freeing up an additional 24 KB of space. Even a small modification can save money for a large file.

Every JPEG file that JPEGmini handles is marked in order to avoid unneeded compression and subsequent image degradation. As a result, when I looked at the same file twice, I discovered the following:

That is a rather ingenious technique to make sure no more data is lost.

The only thing that I was unable to figure out how to do was reset the "Total Space Saved" at the top of the application. The counter merely increments by one each time you process a JPEG image; exiting and reopening the software has no impact on this. The JPEGmini team could consider including a "reset" button next to it so that users can observe total savings each time a batch of photos is processed.

Now, if you're interested in seeing a comparison of how well this JPEG compression maintains the quality of the photographs, scroll down below.

Update: One of our readers let us know that by simply using more compression, the same effect could be achieved. The ideal compression ratio for each image would need to be determined, which is unquestionably the case, but I personally do not have the time to do it. For the sake of this experiment, I extracted a photo from Lightroom at the second-to-highest quality setting of 85%, which produced a file size of 16.855 MB. As a result, I was forced to use a lower-quality image because the original was much bigger than 11.535 MB.

I decreased the quality level to 77 percent in order to re-extract the image (third tier). This time, the size was 11.154 MB instead of the 11.154 MB that JPEGmini created. The pictures created by JPEGmini and the ones I took at a 77 percent quality level were identical. What happens when we import the Lightroom file at 77% into JPEGmini, then? By further compressing the file to 8.793 MB, the software was able to save an additional 22 percent of storage space. This time, the differences between the JPEGmini compressed image and the 77 percent quality image were very tiny (the majority of people would not be able to notice them), but they were still there.

This merely suggests that the image was compressed using JPEGmini at a lower quality than I had selected in Lightroom and that it "should be sufficient." And without a doubt, it was.

4) Making use of the Lightroom plugin JPEGmini

The moment has come for me to test out JPEGmini in Lightroom and include it into my workflow now that I was aware of all the fantastic benefits this software offers. I've already shown how to install and activate the plugin, so all I had to do was finish one step of the export procedure. Select the photographs you wish to extract from Lightroom, then click the Export button. The Export window will now appear, looking as follows:

From here, all you have to do is click "Insert" after choosing the JPEGmini sub-menu from the page's left side. The JPEGmini sub-menu will then be added to the export window's right side, and the export window will then change slightly:

You can see that in addition to the other tools listed in this post, I'm utilizing ExifTool to process exported JPEG images in order to conserve even more disk space.

5) In Conclusion

Despite the fact that my photography workflow has remained fairly consistent over the past few years, it now seems that, whether I publish images for this website or provide images to my clients, it needs to be slightly modified to include JPEGmini now that I have tested its incredible recompression technology. Thanks to the product's seamless integration into Lightroom, I don't have to worry about making any changes to my present procedures because the software handles everything automatically. I'm happy to report that, after extensive testing and comparisons, the application meets up to its promises. Its clever engine, which results in significant space savings without affecting speed, makes this possible.

Even while the software may not be a need for someone who does not care about file sizes when working with JPEG files, anyone who publishes photographs on their website or struggles with large files on their laptops, tablets, and other devices should take a good look at what it has to offer. The aforementioned article provides an example of how a sizable amount of space may be saved. JPEGmini is probably most useful for people who back up their photos to the cloud because smaller files mean faster upload times.

Where to Purchase

JPEGmini is discounted by $70 at B&H Photo Video through September 12th. Grab it while you can for $79.00 since it typically costs $149!

I hope this post clarifies the product and its effects for you.