Resizing Pictures

[Mick F]

I can't comment about PCs and Microsoft, but here's a quick tutorial on AppleMacs.

Open your picture in Preview. This is found in your Applications folder and has the icon

Preview Icon.jpg (5.95 KiB) Viewed 82858 times

At the top of your screen, to the right of the Apple logo you will see "Tools". Click once on it and a drop-down menu appears. Click once on "Adjust Size..."

A window opens up.

The forum has a size limit for attachments and if you try to upload big ones it takes ages.

To reduce the size of your picture, there are a few ways.

I find the following the easiest:
Make sure you are in "Pixles" and "Pixles per Inch" on the drop-down menus to the right of the window.
Alter the "Width" or "Height" to 750, (depending on the picture being Landscape of Portrait) and the "Resolution" to 72. Make sure you have "Scale proportionally" and "Resample image" checked with a tick.

The "Resulting Size" below will change from the big size to something smaller.

Lastly, "Save As" the picture. Keyboard shortcut is Shift/Command/S
A window opens:

To the right of "Format" you need to change it to "JPEG" as that is the best format for uploading. It may already be at JPEG of course. Save the picture to your desktop - easiest place to put it!

You can then upload the photograph is the usual way to the forum.

Hope that helps, but it's far simpler to do than to explain!

Here's the picture I was demonstrating with in the larger size. Click on it a couple of times to see the full size:

Here it is again reduced in size. Notice that even when you click on it, it's still the same size:

Finally, a good tip.
Use the forum method of uploading attachments rather than Flicker or Photobucket etc. It's far easier and far simpler - and above all, it's forum-friendly.

Good luck!

Hopefully someone will come on and explain how it's all done with a PC.

[anniesboy]

"Notice that even when you click on it, it's still the same size:"

No they are not ,they both increase in size,the second one is slightly smaller.

At least that's what I get on my PC

[alicej]

On a PC (anything with Windows), you can re-size images like this:

1. Click Start > Programs > Accessories > Paint to start Microsoft Paint.

2. Open the image file you wish to edit. (Click File > Open, then find your photo and double-click on it)

3. Click the Image menu at the top and select Stretch/Skew Image.

4. Choose a percentage figure to resize the image. To avoid distortion, choose the same percentage for the horizontal and vertical. If you haven't a clue, try 50%.

5. Click OK.

6. Click File > Save As... and re-name your file to prevent overwriting the original image.

7. Now the re-named file should post to the forum OK.

(These instructions largely copied and a little altered from http://www.wikihow.com/Resize-an-Image- ... soft-Paint, therefore a Creative Commons license applies http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/)

[Mick F]

"Notice that even when you click on it, it's still the same size:"

No they are not ,they both increase in size,the second one is slightly smaller.

At least that's what I get on my PC

Sorry, you're right of course.
I was expecting it to be the same, but it is a bit bigger. The point was made - hopefully - that the large size was huge! and the small size was ok.

I spent ages doing that post, and I jumped the gun a bit with my explanation.

[gaz]

On a PC (anything with Windows), you can re-size images like this:

So far I've either been setting the camera to VGA, which saves a lot of bother as it'll upload instantly but loses a bit of quality, or messing around with two different photo editing programs to re-size and compress.

So I just had a go using Paint to upload a pic on the Test Board (now deleted). It took a few goes to find the right target size but that can only get easier with experience.

Thanks for that, it's really quite straightforward.

Edit - Once you've saved the file, use Image > Attributes to tell you the file size. So long as it's under 256Kb the froum will accept it.

[alicej]

It took a few goes to find the right target size but that can only get easier with experience.

I think that if you take photos with the same camera or phone without wildly adjusting the settings (or the zoom on some less-good cameras), then most of your photos will be roughly the same size and so roughly the same % will work every time.

[simonineaston]

only goes to show that most of us don't need all those mega pixels the camera companies are so keen to sell us...

[Tigger]

only goes to show that most of us don't need all those mega pixels the camera companies are so keen to sell us...

Hmmm, but you do if you want to make quality (large) prints out of them!