how to resize (reduce) digital images
 

I used my wife's Canon 20D to shoot some pictures of my car.

The files even when shooting in JPEG are around 3mb.

When uploading to the Pelican BBS the files are way too big and get stopped.

I used Windows Paint to resize the picture and the files get much smaller but the quality of the pic is reduced dramatically.

On the BBS I have seen very good qual pictures... how do you do that keeping the files small?

There are some really good software programs out there for free that do a great job of resizing. I use IrfanView. Google it and you will find a place to download if from. I would also change the quality selector on your camera. For pictures on the computer you really can't tell a difference between the medium and high settings.

Do you have Microsoft Office Picture Manager? ? ? That is what I use. try to right click on one of your pictures and go about half way down the list of options to "open with". A list of programs that you'll be able to open the picture with should be there. If Microsoft Office Picture manager is there open it with that. Then when the picture is opened with picture manager click on "edit pictures" on the top tool bar. Then a window will open on the right side of the screen and at the bottom of the list of options select "compress pictures." Once there I typically choose to compress the pictures to "document" size and that should do the trick.

I've got windows XP professional and added Microsoft Office and my computer has it so maybe you do too. When I double click on pictures though it used to open in windows paint too so it took a little bit of luck for me to find the program.

Rich

Ha! my office at work does not have the picture manager...
My office at home does.. Trying to see if I can download it... otherwise I'll follow Kurt's suggestion and get IrFanView.

Thanks!

I believe IrfanView is probably the best free image software out there.

www.gimp.org

Free and free. And equal to Photoshop, if not better.

Open your image with it, right click on it, pick image then scale then put in new width/height value, keep the ratio of w:h the same as the original.

Google Microsoft power tools. They have a good image resizer program that integrates into the OS. I believe it's only for Win XP. Works well, just right click and select resize picture. There's also a bunch of other free power tools available from Microsoft.

I have just dowmloaded GIMP at home... will do the same at work. Havent got around using it yet though...

File: My Pictures - if your pics are saved here
Right click
Resize Pictures
Select Medium

Done.

Oh another question...

I used to have little thumbnails showing up when opening "My Picture"...

Now the thumbnails have been replaced by the icon of the software I am using to open them (now a little bear or gekko or whatever for Irfranview).

How do I go back to seeing the thumbnails? I must have several hundred of pic... and finding the right one has become difficult...

Pick view from the top, then thumbnails

I know... but istead of the thumbnails I have the Jpeg icon or the icon of the software chosen to open the pics...

I believe you have to switch "opens with" to a Microsoft prog (EI, or picture and fax viewer) to get the thumbs. When you installed Irfanview, you must have installed it as the default viewer. (BTW, I believe the Irfan icon is roadkill)

BTW; I think MS just recently released a RAW utility or powertoy to work with that format, which is one the 20D can use too.

....Right click any jpeg>properties>general> "Change" button by opens with.

I find that when posting pics to the web, it's often a balance between resizing and/or cropping and/or jpeg compression to get the best pics for viewing.

I tried it all... Now I have thumbs of a sunset (open with picture/fax viewerr).
I am downloading the MS Raw viewer...

Thanks for the heads up