Paint.net increases my scanned images file size

[Siekierka]

Same thing happens in IrfanView.

I just scanned some notes, and because it was a rather big number of pages, I decided to use express scanning and to crop them afterwards, in Paint.net.

The problem is - paint.net increases the filesize of these grayscale scans significantly, despite the fact, that the images, after cropping, are smaller. Here's an example:

http://i48.tinypic.com/9k2f7p.jpg

This image is 600 KB, straight from the scanner. To keep the file size at 600 KB, after cropping, I have to lower the quality down to 67%. The decrease in quality isn't that noticeable, as these are no complex images (they're grayscale), but it's still worrying that I have to dumb it down to keep it small.

Any thoughts or tips on this?

Edited May 26, 2012 by Siekierka

[Rick Brewster]

Paint.NET doesn't save as grayscale. It'll save as 24-bit RGB instead of 8-bit Grayscale, which explains the change in size.

Why are you worried about the file size vs. quality?

[Siekierka]

Hmmm, interesting. IrfanView does have grayscale, but it doesn't help much. Size still goes up.

I'm not really worried. I'd be worried were I a website admin, who'd want to keep the files on his website as small as possible, not to tax his servers and bandwidth too much. But then I probably wouldn't use freeware.

Thanks for the info. Keep up the good work, your program's great.