Making large Pano file smaller

[Tracey Perrin]

I have a Pano of around 10 images stitched together and the file is huge. Whats the best way to make it smaller without loosing the quality of the image?

Edited February 12, 2016 by Tracey Perrin

[Damien Symonds]

Oh, good question!

For what reason do you need to make it smaller?

[Tracey Perrin]

Upload to facebook and other webpages and possibly for printing as well.

[Damien Symonds]

Yes, of course you'd shrink it for those purposes.  But you need to keep it in its full-size glory as a master file.  Have you saved it safely as a PSD file onto your hard drive?

[Tracey Perrin]

Yes I have a Full-sized master file saved as a PSD 

[Damien Symonds]

Terrific!!!

So this is absolutely no different from any of your other photos.

• If you want to save it for web, you flatten it, resize it down to web size (eg 2048px wide for Facebook), sharpen it for web, and save it as a jpeg and upload it.
• If you want to print it, you flatten it, use the Crop Tool to crop it to the exact size you want, at the exact resolution your lab requires, then sharpen for print, save it as a jpeg, and upload it to the lab.

In short, you adhere to the trash principle exactly the same as you would for any other photo.