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Level 1

11 points

iPhone 4 photo-size is a disaster! 2MB per photo!?

Hi,

it took me about a year to convince all of my friends not to use the highest (12 megapixels) resolution on their digital cameras available, instead take pictures with 2 megapixels, since the sensors are so small that it doesn't make a difference anyways. So now it's about 500kb per photo instead of 3MB!

Now, the iPhone 4 has this super 5 megapixels sensor and there is no option to set it back to 2 megapixels, so every single photo imported to iPhoto has about 2MB!!!

Does anyone know of an automator-script, batch-app, hack that allows me to shrink the photos without messing with timestamps and other meta-data of the photos?

Regards,
Eric.

Mac Mini, MacbookPro, iPod Shuffle & iPhone, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Jul 2, 2010 2:56 AM

54 replies

Sep 13, 2010 1:45 PM in response to iMatt.co.tv

just read the first post and i am not sure if someone else said it before but it is wrong that just recording 2mp doesnt make a difference in quality.
first it depends on what you want to do with the photo. if it is shooting pictures of friends that come up when they phone you might be right but a 2mp picture from the iphone also just uses a fraction of the sensor whereas you could get a much better quality downsizing a 5 mp picture to 2 mp.
there are cameras that can actually use all their pixels and give you a high quality picture with nearly all the information of the full resolution downsized to a smaller resolution.
anyway - why should 5 mb per photo be a problem. the smallest iphone 4 has 16 gig. plenty of space if you ask me.
i just found this thread as i was looking for a way to get raw out of the iphone which comes with much bigger filesizes.
the increased resolution is the reason why i bought the iphone 4. why dont you use one of the old models then?

Sep 13, 2010 1:48 PM in response to esreverse

just read more of the thread.
i know that there are camera apps that give you a reduced filesize if you want. i know for sure that hipstamatic can do that (even if you might want a clean picture and not one influenced by a filter) so there will probably be other apps that do the same.

MBC66

Level 1

0 points

Sep 16, 2010 7:58 AM in response to franksterling

Hopefully Apple reads these... I also understand that for quality it is better to take a higher resolution picture. However there are instances where this is overkill. For instance, my wife is a shopper.. likes taking pics to send to friends to see if they want her to buy a certain pair of boots. A 5MB pic of boots isn't needed, 500k would work. Our plan allows 2GB of data.. with my wife sending numerous 5MB pics, and her friends sending her 5MB pics with their iPhone4... 2GB isn't that much.. (remember when you had a 286 computer and would NEVER use 40mb of data on your hard drive... kinda different, but kinda the same.). Sure there are work arounds, but the time/convenience factor is lost.. she want's snap-n-send.. not snap-edit-crop-reduce-reuse-recycle-print-mail..

PLEASE UPGRADE THE SOFTWARE TO ALLOW THE USER TO CHOOSE PICTURE RESOLUTION!

Nov 3, 2010 6:11 PM in response to MBC66

If you have the iPhone4 you can use the front facing camera which shoots at much lower resolution.

Sep 9, 2012 8:55 AM in response to honeyb27

Just curious, does anyone know if An-dr0idd has this feature built in...?

(this comment will probably be wiped in minutes) 🙂

Sep 9, 2012 9:22 AM in response to aamailhot

I sympathize WHOLE-heartedly with the original post here. All he wants is an AUTOmated way to take pictures that take up less space from the get-go. As in:

1) Press the 'take picture button' (which I'm just confirming, doesn't have the option to map it to a PHYSICAL button on the camera's edge? K, lovely...)

2a) Send the (already reasonably sized) picture to someone (no additional choices needed, please) via email OR

2b) Import a bunch of (automatically reasonably sized) pictures to your computer via the handy (if a bit old-school) storage-device USB feature.

Is that so much to ask?

And just to confirm my stance, I am TOTALLY gung-ho about the ability to take and store more MB and meg pixes of image--Apple should even have it be the default setting, by all means--BUT I am WAY more in favor of users being able to configure their phone to their own preferences. I don't do anything but fb/email with LOTS of pictures and I don't have the TIME to tediously resize each one, or even batch-resize them, which would just be ANOTHER learning-curve/program i'd have to invest in...

So to those few of you that actually bothered to provide HELPFUL responses regarding features/work-arounds that would affect a non-ideal solution, I thank you. You actually read the originator's request and responded to it *gasp*.

BUT this thread is unfortunately popluated with an overwhelming amount of garbage posts about how there is NO reason to want small image sizes because of inefficiency/professionlism/print-outs/WHATEVER, shame on you! And don't suggest that the originator can resize images to lower qualities at a later date. Give him some credit that he KNOWS this already, what he was actually asking about was not having to be bothered with the aditional clicks/taps on a per-picture basis.

THANK YOU to the originator for a very astute and useful post; I wish you were designing our consumer products.

Sep 9, 2012 9:27 AM in response to aamailhot

And my last comment, which is just speculation:

Shame on a certain fruit if my suspecion is correct and they are trying to 'encourage' users to send larger file sizes (since a lot of people will be too lazy to find a work-around or make changes on a per-picture basis), thereby having us chew through our data plans quicker.

IF such tactics existed, rather than this being merely a case of short-sighted product functionality, it would cause me to reevaluate my choice of product.

gxpa

Level 1

0 points

Oct 17, 2012 9:22 AM in response to esreverse

A simple hi res, low res switch would be perfect.

Nov 20, 2012 4:42 AM in response to aamailhot

I found this thread while searching for the same question in the original post. I completely agree with the original poster. I use my iphone to take move out pictures of rental properties. These are quick snapshots for 100 + picutres where there is no reason I need large file sized that very quickly take up storage on the pc harddrive once downloaded. I often find myself grabbing the stand alone camera to use instead for this simple purpose. There isn't a standalone camera I've grabbed yet that doesn't have this feature.

Not being a photoshop user and not being into high quality photo management, I'm not familiar with how to change the size of photos as a batch. If someone could point me in the right direction, I'd be most grateful.

iPhone 4 photo-size is a disaster! 2MB per photo!?