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Reducing Storage Size of Images


IT Consultant

Idea

Please consider an improvement to Evernote regarding the overall file size in terms of bytes for images stored within notes.  Some images might get added to a note simply for viewing the image at a later point in time, and for this viewing-only purpose, the image doesn't need to be stored within the note using an amount of storage bytes that is a larger than necessary.  Perhaps there can be an option to optimize the image in terms of the overall file size of a stored image.

Here is one scenario I encountered that resulted in a 1.4 megabyte image within a note:
Using the built-in camera on the iPhone 8 Plus, I took a picture of an object.  The phone was set to save pictures taken by the camera in "legacy" format which results in a JPG image.  I then viewed the image using the Photos app on the phone, to then create a new note within Evernote to contain this image.  The photo taken by the phone's camera captured a larger area than the actual object, so I cropped the image to the edges of the object using the crop function within Evernote.  The cropped image was 1.4 megaytes in file size, and I know for certain that an image like this could exist at a much smaller file size and still be adequately viewable.

My technical wisdom leads me to think that Evernote maintains the original binary structure of an image after a crop is done, which would explain what I am considering to be the larger than necessary file size of 1.4 megabytes, so please consider my idea to offer an option whereby the user can choose to optimize an image to reduce the file size.

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Yes, i have found this. But it will cut parts of the picture away (which is the concept of cropping, I know).

What I was looking for is a reduction of file size (typically by reducing the resolution / pushing up the compression rate of the JPEG-compression) without visually cutting parts of the picture away.

To achieve this I currently use the app PicsArt, which is a nuisance, because in the free version it forces a lot of ads on you. But it is the only simple app I know that will reduce the file size without modifying the picture. Just the resolution drops, depending on your input.

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I'd like 'Simplify formatting' to offer to compress images for me quickly and easily, without having to worry about the technicalities.

I almost always want the image as a small thumbnail to remind me what it's about, not to provide huge detail, and I also want fast (therefore small) notebooks.

Ideally 'Simplify formatting' would tell me the size of the note now, and estimate what it could reduce it to with various levels of compression.

Ideally with the option to take me through each image in turn, with storage used, and options for the size in the note and compression levels, plus option to delete it completely.

Cropping would be an added bonus, but I find most of my images come in to Evernote cropped already.

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Hello,

I think Evernote should add a function to compress images.

If not automaticly, at least manually from image contextual menu : "Compress image", like LibreOffice does :

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I often use tools to compress my images, like Riot for instance, but is isn't convenient to always use an external tool.

I'm sure it will save an enormous size of unused data (i think about my thousands of notes and at millions of Evernote users) and Evernote will be faster.

For instance, i just created a not with two lines of text : the size is about 30 Bytes. I simply add a screenshot (not compressed by external tool) : the note size is now 600 KBytes !

When i add images to Evernote, it isn't to save high quality image, but always for just have a visual like a screenshot anotated...

Do you know if it is planned in the new Evernote 10 ?

Bye

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So I tested this out using the Windows application:

  • I found a note containing a single image.
  • I duplicated that note.
  • In the duplicate note, I right clicked and opened up the image in aan image editor (Paint.Net)
  • Cropped the image to a smaller center rectangle, and saved it.
  • On return from Paint.Net, the note's image was seen to be correctly cropped.
  • To compare: the original note was reported at 310KB, and the duplicated note was reported at 37K. 
  • I then exported both notes to disk in Evernote format, and verified that the exported note sizes were also correct.

So what could be the cause of what you're seeing, aside from the fact that you're using a different OS than me? One thing that popped into my mind is that in cropping oyur image, you cropped out stuff that was non-complex, i.e. easily compressible, while the common center section remained possibly less easily compressible, and if your side reporting units were KB rather than bytes, you may not have noticed an difference. The thing to do in your situation is to run a test like I did, with duplicate notes, editing one and comparing results. That sghould tell a more complete story.

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17 hours ago, IT Consultant said:

I cropped the image to the edges of the object using the crop function within Evernote.

I used Evernote/IOS to crop an image.

It clearly reduced the size of the image.  I could see this in note details, and rbe actual image files.

IMG_3068.jpeg.52ac862cb22692fe97bfc8be6f8cc191.jpeg   >>>>  IMG_3067.jpeg.bcc11ee1ee96ffe81f1139c2c70f181a.jpeg

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55 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

How can you crop a picture inside of EN / iOS ? I have not discovered this option yet.

IMG_3072.thumb.png.1fafa5febde6e63b6afe467f29424e3b.png

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16 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

What I was looking for is a reduction of file size (typically by reducing the resolution / pushing up the compression rate of the JPEG-compression) without visually cutting parts of the picture away.

This is just an issue between you and your image editor, and not really much to do with Evernote..If you can do it in place and then just save/quit as is done via cropping, then that should work fine.

Just waiting for the original poster to to retry their cropping example, because my technical wisdom leads me to believe that Evernote handles this correctly.

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On 5/7/2019 at 11:46 PM, IT Consultant said:

Please consider an improvement to Evernote regarding the overall file size in terms of bytes for images stored within notes. 

 

51 minutes ago, Wilf Forrow said:

I'd like 'Simplify formatting' to offer to compress images for me quickly and easily, without having to worry about the technicalities.

I use the attachment feature to store images in notes, and I appreciate the inline display.

When it comes to editing the images, I use external software.  

I believe this is better handled by dedicated apps, and don't want to see Evernote bloated with such extraneous functions.

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3 hours ago, Wilf Forrow said:

I'd like 'Simplify formatting' to offer to compress images for me quickly and easily, without having to worry about the technicalities.

Problem is that an image is not formatting; it's content. The "Simplify formatting" command would be a poor UI choice for this sort of functionality. A more appropriate command like "Convert to thumbnail" would be better, though you still would need to parameterise what you mean by a thumbnail (e.g., desired dimensions).

4 hours ago, Wilf Forrow said:

Ideally 'Simplify formatting' would tell me the size of the note now, and estimate what it could reduce it to with various levels of compression.

Ideally with the option to take me through each image in turn, with storage used, and options for the size in the note and compression levels, plus option to delete it completely.

Cropping would be an added bonus, but I find most of my images come in to Evernote cropped already.

Ultimately, these seem to imply workflows that are more complicated than you claim to want initially: you'd need to parameterize (i.e. prompt for or have separate settings for) thumbnail dimensions, among other things

I could certainly see a separate "Create Thumbnail" command, or ever better a "Create Snippet Thumbnail" command that resizes the selected image to become the image used in views that use note thumbnails (e.g. Windows Snippet view), meaning it would be the winner of the "largest-smallest" criterion for selecting a note's displayed thumbnail. Might actually increase the size of an image, but it would be really useful, considering the number of people who've asked for the ability to designate a selected image as an Evernote thumbnail.

 

 

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I wonder why you care. First EN is not build to be a picture platform. Sure you can drop a picture into a note, but it is not good to organize then (no access to the EXIF metadata, for example).

Second the OCR ability in fact is very sensitive to picture quality. Compressing on import would reduce the OCR effectiveness.

Third I don’t want EN to mess with my data on import in any way.

If you want to compress pictures, do it before sending them into EN.

If you only want to control how big a picture shows after import, insert a table, and place the picture into a cell of the table.

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My use case, I'm asked to watch a series of Youtubes in preparation for lectures, about 60 mins worth each week. These Youtubes are about 1 slide per minute, and I'm looking to take a screenshot of each.

I plan to use that screenshot as a memory jog and to annotate with my own notes. The OCR is sort of irrelevant in this use case. I would like therefore to be able to have a configurable setting such that the screenshots/ screen clips I take can be auto compressed before storage in my default Evernote folder. I understand OCR is an inportant and necessary feature, however certain users want to use the program differently, and I personally wouldn't mind losing the image quality and the character recognition.

Each full screen clip I take on Windows OS is 3.9mb, which makes every set of notes from these videos over 200mb, which is excessive. I could reduce the file size of each image manually, but it seems like it wouldn't be an especially complicated thing to automate and make configurable in preferences i.e. default it to no compression, as is the current setting, then give user a slider to determine if / how much they would like to compress clips, making it clear that they would lose image quality and potential functionality. Evernote is sort of built on the idea of improving workflow, so it would seem a bit of a no brainer.

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Image compression is a science in itself. There is a ton of original formats, and another impressive amount of target formats.

As a workaround, I would first create the pictures and store them in a folder.

Next I would get myself IrfanView, a free tool that is around since the Sumerians scribbled the first rough pictures on clay boards. It can do nearly everything with a picture, except working on the picture itself. Changing format is a piece of cake for it.

IrfanView can perform nearly every action in a batch routine. So you set your desired parameters for your screenshots, select the folder and execute the compression on all of them.

After it finished, you can import the pictures into EN and start working on it.

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On 8/28/2021 at 4:58 PM, PinkElephant said:

I wonder why you care. First EN is not build to be a picture platform. Sure you can drop a picture into a note, but it is not good to organize then (no access to the EXIF metadata, for example).

 

I'm not sure that I agree as the first icon is a camera for if you want to take a picture.  While a picture platform might not be its sole purpose, it is clearly created with  the idea of taking and attaching pictures.  I've been using EN for years for the purpose of attaching several photos to a specific job site.  In the last couple of months the pictures have been coming in at about 20MB each-that alone takes forever to bring up a preview when I'm sitting at my desk trying to add additional notes.  This is new and I'm not sure what started this.  I don't need high quality pics-just enough to recognize what I'm looking at.  This thread is over 2 years old-has this still never been addressed?

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On 5/8/2019 at 12:16 PM, IT Consultant said:

 

Evernote could improve by allowing users to optimize image sizes within notes, especially for viewing-only purposes, reducing unnecessary storage usage on the other hand you can use Jpeg compressor for reducing image size.

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On a Mac it is quite simple: „Open“ will open the picture in Preview. Preview has a ton of tools, among them to change the picture dimensions.

Closing the picture window saves the changes right back into the note.

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