Tutorials

Learn how to reduce the file size of iView photo catalogs, while improving the quality of your thumbnails.

Intro
Some applications, such as Adobe Photoshop, embed a small, low-quality thumbnail into the media file. Digital cameras do this as well. During import, iView renders that pre-existing "built-in" thumbnail and stores it in the catalog file. Maintaining this default setting makes importing fast, but it also makes the largest catalogs.

To reduce the size of your catalog, you will set the iView preferences to render its own thumbnails and compress them. These thumbnails will be superior in quality and take up much less catalog space than the "built-in" thumbnails.

Import Options
The first place to start is the Import Options dialog box in the Edit Menu (Shift-CMD-I ). The two important options are "Ignore built-in thumbnails" and "JPEG Compress thumbnails."

JPEG Compress thumbnails will also reduce the size of your catalog by 25 to 50 percent. It's recommended that you switch this option on if you are planning to have large catalogs (1,000+ items), as the size of a catalog with uncompressed thumbnails may run to 10 MB+. (The default setting is off).

Ultimately, this ends up being a question of priority: catalog file size compared to time to create catalog.

Examples
To illustrate the size and time variations, we created a catalog using 100 photos taken by a Sony Cybershot 3.3 megapixel digital camera. The total media size to be cataloged is 115 megabytes. The thumbnail size is "Large" (128 pixels).

Ex. 1: Default setting - Using built-in thumbnails
Time to create catalog	30 seconds (fastest)
Catalog size	3.8 MB
Ex. 2: Ignore built-in thumbnails
Time to create catalog	2:51 minutes
Catalog size	2.5 MB
Ex. 3: Using built-in thumbnails & JPEG compress
Time to create catalog	39 seconds
Catalog size	1.6 MB
Ex. 4: Ignore built-in thumbnails & JPEG compress
Time to create catalog	3 minutes
Catalog size	883 K (smallest)

Note: Results will be different
Catalog sizes will vary depending on the size of the original built-in thumbnail. Every digital camera and software program has a different methodology for creating and embedding thumbnails.

Time to catalog media will vary based on your computer’s operating system and processor speed. It will also vary depending on the size of the original media file. For example, it will take longer for iView to create a thumbnail of an 25 MB Photoshop file than it will for a 2 MB digital camera file.

Size of Thumbnail
To further reduce the size of your photo catalog, you will need to choose a small size thumbnail. This can be done in the Size menu (right), located in the lower left hand corner of the catalog window.

Examples: To illustrate the size variations, we took Example 4 (the smallest catalog) and changed the thumbnail size. The time to create each of these catalogs was exactly the same.

Using Ex. 4 options: Ignore built-in thumbs & JPEG compress
Thumbnail size	Catalog Size
Huge - 160 pixels	1.2 MB
Large - 128 pixels	883 K
Medium - 96 pixels	624 K
Small - 64 pixels	424 K

Summary
We started off with a quick import of 100 photos, using default settings, that resulted in a 3.8 MB catalog file size. By changing the import options and thumbnail size, we reduced the catalog file size by almost 90% to 424 K and got better quality thumbnails. To get these results, we had to wait an additional 2.5 minutes. Exact results may vary, but the general rules will always apply.