CHM File over 25 MB. Can I easily compress images?

[drakeh]

Hi guys,

Relatively new to Flare. Our CHM file is now over 25 MB. Is there a simple way to compress or lower the image quality of our images? There are many screenshots throughout our file. We have discussed going to each image and bringing the quality down, but that would require hours of work. Before we go ahead and consider our options for deleting/making images smaller, is there a way to bring down the image quality throughout a project, perhaps through an image class?

Also, does adding thumbnails greatly increase the size of a CHM file if about half of the images use a class that uses a thumbnail?

Thanks!

[SteveS]

Many image editors allow batch processing including the resizing of images.

One of the things to check is the output resolution of your images. If you are using screen captures there is no need to change the resolution to 300 dpi as many people think. The original capture is in 96dpi (Windows) or 72dpi (Mac). Changing these images to 300dpi will result in a loss of sharpness while making the file size much larger.

HTH

[SteveS]

...and welcome to the forums!

[drakeh]

Thanks! Would this work for images already in a Flare file, or would the images need to be resized before they're added to Flare?

I added another question today about why Search doesn't search behind Drop-Downs, and if there's a way to enable it..?

Thanks so much for your help

[SteveS]

I don't have access to Flare at the moment but I can't see why not. You'll have to run the conversion process on the individual folders (containing images) within resources/images but these files are easily accessed through Windows Explorer and therefore another graphics application. Flare should use the new images next time it builds, but you might want to purge the temporary folder (just to be sure). There is a command on the ribbon that does this for you.

[NorthEast]

Firstly, is the 25MB size actually causing a problem?
If it's a large help file with a lot of images, and you're using compressed image formats like JPG or PNG, then it may just have to be that size.
For example, one of our projects has a 90MB WebHelp, and Flare's help is around 200MB (out of a 400MB installation).

If you want to check the image sizes used in your HTML help, use Windows Explorer to look in the output temporary folder used to build that target; it's Output\<user name>\Temporary\<target name>
Then just search for files in the format you use for images (e.g. *.jpg or *.png) to list all the images and sizes.

You might also find out there are old images in the output that you don't actually use; so either delete these (if you don't need them), or exclude them using conditions (if you use them in a different target, or don't want to delete). You can generate reports in Flare to identify unused items in your project.

To reduce the image sizes, the dpi figure isn't really the thing to check - it's the image dimensions in pixels that matters for the file size. For example, a 500x500 pixel image will be the file size whether its nominal dpi is 50dpi or 500dpi ; the dpi just means its nominal print size on paper will be 10x10 inches (50dpi) or 1x1 inches (500dpi).

The things that will affect file size are:

1) The image dimensions in pixels. Screen captures are usually 1-to-1, the actual screen size. You can reduce the dimensions, but obviously make sure the images are still legible (i.e. not fuzzy).

2) The image format. Saving an image in BMP format will result in an extremely large file size, so use a compressed image format such as PNG or JPG. You can also save JPG images with a lower 'quality' to further reduce file size at the expense of sharpness.

Changing the image format or re-sizing the images shouldn't take hours of work. There are many free image editing tools that would allow you make these sort of changes to a batch of images at once; I have FastStone Image Viewer and IrfanView installed, and both will handle batch conversions.
If you change the image format, just be aware that you'll also have to change the links in Flare to use the different file extension (e.g. BMP to JPG); but you could do with a find and replace in Flare.

[drakeh]

Thank you both very much. I will try all of the methods to see what we can do.

As far as I know the size isn't causing a problem, but certain people inside my organization have started complaining. I think they are just alarmed by the size, but then again it's an extremely advanced program that the file is trying to "help" with.

You mentioned that Flare can generate reports to call out unused items in a project, how would I go about doing that?

We are on Flare 7, BTW.

Thanks again!

-Hannah

[drakeh]

Just figured out to create reports - and then I was getting an error so I had to delete my "Analyzer" file. Flare is amazing. Now I can delete my unused files/images! (Can you tell I am coming in to a project at the end and trying to bring it up to par? )

[neilcav]

ACDSee isn't a bad tool if you wanted to batch resize a load of images within one directory. We tend to use it quite a bit for help file screenshots.