Not much more sewn today, did get the layout sorted out. DH wanted to eat outside on the patio, at least he cooked. Then we had to take a walk since it was still nice.
The size of the pictures is determined by how many pixels are required to make up the picture. If the colors are larger blocks of a single color, then the pixels will be larger but the file size smaller, i.e. you don't need as many to make up the picture. I hope this helps to make sense of why same settings lead to different size files.