Should You Use The S2 and S3 JPEG Options?

On the T3i/600D you have two additional JPEG options ; S2 and S3. Both options create images that are saved with low compression, but at very small sizes. The S2 option produces images at a diminutive 3.5 x 5.1 inches with a 2.5 megapixel recording size, but the image is at a size that fits into a digital photo frame with no resizing needed in an editing program. The S3 option produces even smaller images that are ready for you to send in e-mail or post on the web, and it record on 0.3 megapixels. These are convenient options, but because you cannot shoot these small file in combination with a large size , you have to be certain that you will never want large versions of you S2 and S3 images.

Rather than set the image quality to these small sizes, you can instead resize L, M, S1, and, S2 images in the camera so that you have the size you need for diferent uses such as displaying in a photo frame or e-mailing. The process of resizing images in the camera is detailed later in this blog