File & Folder Space AWT3&4

In Non-Traditional Media Art, you are expected to create a lot of digital images, sound files and possibly some video as well. These take up disk space, and that’s okay, but we share a fileserver with 1500 other users. So…

You need to be aware of how much disk space you are using.

You need to continually clean up unneeded files.

If you don’t clean up, the fileserver may fill up, and you might have your files deleted!

What to Do Right now, and at least Weekly:

· Find out how much space you’re using in various folders (such as AWT3/4), and altogether (your whole H: drive).

· Take action when you start to use more than 100 Mb.

· Find out where the big files/folders are, and figure out how to reduce your space usage from the info below.

FAQs

How do you find out how much space you are using?

• Right-click on any folder, and choose “Properties” Okay, apparently you’ve been stripped of the power to use Properties under “School Connect”. Nope, I don’t know why. But you can find out the size of a whole folder simply by hovering your cursor over it until it pops up a little window telling you the size. This includes all its sub-folders.
• You can also look through any folder using Details View to pick out large files. Click on the Size tab to sort by size.

How Much Space Should You Use?

There’s no single answer to this. It depends on how much you really need, plus what’s available.

• Most Media Arts students don’t need more than 15 – 50 Mb at a time
• Occasionally an AWT4 student might need 200 Mb or even more for a project.
• You might temporarily need big files while assembling a project, but you can’t keep hundreds of Mb around for more than a few days.

New: You MUST use a memory stick, and keep your files backed up at home

Especially in Grade 12 AWT4, you’ll likely go over your storage limit, which I believe is currently 500 Mb (it may only be 300 Mb).

Therefore…

• Follow all the space reducing strategies below
• Especially remember to cull most of the pics you’ve downloaded from cameras, after you decide which ones to keep
• Once a project is done and evaluated, you don’t need it here, BUT don’t just delete it. Instead, cut and paste the project folder to your memory stick. Take it home and immediately copy it to a hard drive at home. You should keep all projects and files until the end of the semester. Memory sticks get lost easily, so MUST have a backup at home too.
• Do the same for folders from photo-shoots – don’t leave masses of files here.
• Remember that the biggest files are usually PSDs, and sometimes giant Powerpoints (e.g. a 200 frame time lapse)
• Remember that to be able to edit a Movie maker project, you need the original jpegs too.
• If you don’t have a computer to back up to at home, you can burn up to 650 Mb onto a single CD. DON’T just depend on a single memory stick. Murphy’s Law says that the more critical the data is on it, the more likely you’ll lose it!

How Can You Reduce the Space You Use?

• Delete files you don’t need – pics you’ll never use, backups, huge files that have been marked already, folders full of camera downloads you’ve forgotten about…
• Get rid of downloaded songs, games etc. They shouldn’t be there in the first place!
• Shrink files to the minimum resolution necessary. Our monitors only display 1430 pixels in width. I can show you how to automatically shrink a whole folder full of pics to this size. DON’T shrink your very best photos (maybe 20 or 30) if you might want to make a high-res print of them.
• Save as jpegs, not PSDs, provided that you don’t need to keep the layers separate. There’s a HUGE saving when you can do this. However, keep the PSD version if you might still need to work on the layers separately.
• Move big or old files to a memory stick and then your home computer, or burn them onto a CD or DVD (ask me how!)

What Files Should You Not Delete?

• Ones that you haven’t got a mark for yet. But even then, you can clean up your temporary files. E.g. if you took 40 pics for a project, and have incorporated them into a PowerPoint, delete the pic files (except maybe the very best few – keep them or move them to your Portfolio folder)
• The very best final products you create. Keep your best photos as high resolution jpegs. Move them to your Portfolio folder. If you want to keep stuff (e.g. for an Art college application), take the files home.

What Resolution and Format is Right for a Photo?

• It depends what you intend to do with it!
• Format:
• If you’re working in Photoshop, and have a selection, or pasted in layers that you need to keep separate, you need to save in Photoshop (PSD) format
• If you just need the image without layers etc., JPEG is MUCH MUCH smaller!
• Resolution
• For displaying on a screen (e.g. from PowerPoint or Windows slideshow), even a full screen is only about 1400 pixels wide at school – you don’t need thousands of pixels of width and height!
• A common problem is people inserting a bunch of huge jpegs into Powerpoint. Even though you shrink them in Powerpoint, the Powerpoint file still remains huge unless you “Compress Pictures” in Powerpoint. Shrinking your jpegs in Photoshop (see below) BEFORE inserting into Powerpoint makes it easier if you have a lot of photos. Keep a high resolution copy if you need to print or for your portfolio.
• For printing, at school we usually print at 200 or 300 DPI (dots or pixels per inch). So a 5” x 7” print needs to be 7 times 300 = 2100 pixels wide for a high quality print. How many pixels high does an 8 x 10 (landscape) at 600 DPI need to be? Yup, 6000, so if you’ve got files that big, keep them elsewhere, not at school.
• High quality prints need much more resolution, but most of your school files will not be printed!
• Quality Setting
• When you save a Jpeg, it lets you set the quality as the last step. High quality takes up a lot more space. A medium quality of 7 is good enough for most school work, but if it’s your best photo work and you want to preserve it for high quality printing, crank it up to 10 or more.

How do You Find Out and Change a Picture’s Resolution?

• In Windows XP, placing the cursor over a filename tells you the size in Kb or Mb. The Tiles view tells you the resolution (Width x Height in pixels)
• In PhotoShop, go to Image, Resize, Image Size
• This tells you the Width and Height in pixels
• To shrink it (never expand – there’s no point!), type in a new # of pixels for one dimension e.g. 800 instead of 2400 pixels for width. The other dimension will change proportionately
• Click Okay, and save. The file in the example here would now be only 1/9^th the size!