Blur That JPEG And Shrink It Down

Here’s a cool tip for when you’re creating JPEG images. This tip doesn’t work for all images, but can really come in handy for others. The tip is this: Because of the way JPEG compression works, if you can slightly blur your image, the file size will be smaller. You could just add a Gaussian Blur, or you could blur the image directly from the Save for Web dialog by entering a number in the Blur field. However, you’re usually better off putting a selection around the important areas of your image, then inverting the selection (by choosing Inverse from the Select menu) and blurring just the background. That way, the important parts stay sharp, and the noncritical areas become more compressed.