How To Make Photos Smaller

Resize photographs for email & webpages

Digital cameras, including phone cameras, have truly come into their own. Millions of people now take pictures and save them to their computers. From there, photos can easily be sent by email or added to a web page.

However, there's a problem that virtually all digital camera users eventually encounter. The images are too big!

The problem comes down to pixels. Pixels are the tiny bits of data that form digital images. The size of your photo is defined by two things:

1. The picture's width and height in pixels.
2. How many pixels per inch (PPI) your software & monitor can display. (This is their "resolution".)

Web pages and email programs can only display 72 pixels per inch. That's their software limit. However, most digital photos have a much higher PPI than that. The only way that your email software or web browser can display all those pixels is to make your image so big that the resolution comes back down to 72 pixels per inch.

This doesn't change your photo in any way. It's merely a display issue.

If you're emailing a picture, and you want the recipient to be able to print a nice copy of it, then just attach it, send it and forget about how big it looks inside the email program's window. Their printer should have a much higher PPI.

If, on the other hand, any of the following is true, you'll need to reduce the number of pixels:

• The recipient doesn't need a high-quality version of the photo.
• You can't send a file that big.
• The recipient's mailbox isn't big enough for the file.
• You want to put the photo on a web page.

So, how do you resize your photo? First, make an identical copy and create the new version from that. You don't want to risk losing your photo to a mistake!

Google's Picasa photo organizer is free software that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. Download and install it. Then follow the instructions for resizing photos here.

If you use Windows, you may also want to try a free graphics viewer called IrfanView. It enables you to change the size of your photos, as well as to do many other things, like batch photo conversion and processing. Go to this link to download the latest version.

When you've finished installing IrfanView, go to this tutorial. It will take you step-by-step through how to make your image smaller.

Microsoft also provides a free image resizer as part of their PowerToys for Windows XP. Click on the 'Power Toys' tab, and look for Image Resizer.

Most Macintosh users already have what they need built into the operating system. If you use Mac OS X 10.4 or higher, compose a new message in Mail, attach your photo, and look for the 'Image Size' dropdown box at the lower right corner of your message. There, you can choose small, medium, large or actual size.

If you use the Panther operating system, use iPhoto. Simply select the photo you want to send, click on the Email icon at the bottom of the window, and choose your photo size. When you click the "Compose" button, a new email window will open with the smaller copy of your image already inserted.

If you need a photo resized for a webpage, just follow the resize instructions for email, then open Finder. Drag the photo from the email to the directory where you want to save it. Just be sure that the original photo has a different name. You don't want to overwrite it!

Good luck! Now that you know the secret, feel free to share this tutorial with others.