How to Resize Photos

My family’s email account in Blantyre was blocked twice in the past week, due to well-meaning but over-sized Christmas and New Year email greetings. Attachments with over 2 MBs. The family is still on a phone line with a very slow connection rate. And downloading emails with a large attachment takes forever and a day. Luckily I can access their account via the web and move the large emails out of the way. But I thought I’d raise some awareness.

And point you to some resources describing how to resize photos.

Using MS Paint

How to resize your photograph by exact dimensions

1. Right click on the image and select ‘Edit’. (This should bring up Windows Paint).
2. On the menu bar at the top, select Image -> Attributes…
3. If the image is a portrait layout, use a width of 640 and a height of 480. If it’s a landscape layout, use a width of 480 and a height of 640.
4. Save the file. (You may want to ‘Save As’ to a different file so you don’t overwrite the original).

How to resize your photograph by percent

1. Right click on the image and select ‘Edit’. (This should bring up Windows Paint).
2. On the menu bar at the top, select Image -> Stretch/Skew…
3. Change the percentages in the Stretch box for both Vertical and Horizontal. Make them both the same or else the picture will not be proportionate.
4. Save the file (you may want to ‘Save As’ to a different file so you don’t overwrite the original).

Using Picasa

Resize by exporting

Exporting lets you resize your photos while controlling the JPEG compression (image quality) introduced by your applied photo edits. The result is newly resized copies of your photos, saved to any location on your hard drive. During the export process, you can adjust both the ‘Image Size Options’ and the ‘Image Quality’ settings in the ‘Export to Folder’ screen.

• Under ‘Image Size Options,’ select the ‘Resize to’ option and adjust the size slider. The number of pixels you select with this slider determines the length or height of your photo (whichever is longer). The other dimension is determined automatically to maintain the aspect ratio of the photo.
• Select the desired image quality for your photo using the ‘Image Quality’ drop-down menu:
  • Automatic: Preserves the original image quality
  • Normal: Balances quality and size
  • Maximum: Preserves fine detail for large file sizes
  • Minimum: Yields some quality loss for small file sizes
  • Custom: Enables you to select your own value

Resize by emailing

If you’re sending photos by email, you may want to resize then in order to get under the attachment size limitation. To change the size of the photos you email from Picasa, please follow these steps:

1. Click the Tools menu.
2. Select Options.
3. Click the Email tab.
4. Under ‘Output Options,’ use the slider to set your desired pixel size when emailing multiple photos. Use the radio buttons to set the desired pixel size for emailing single photos.
5. Click OK.

Lazy workaround via Flickr

I sometimes use Flickr as a lazy workaround.

1. Upload or email photo to the Flickr stream.
2. Go to the photo page and select All Sizes.
3. Select Small or Medium and click Download the Small (or Medium) Size.

File format:
Always use JPEG.

There are tonnes of other ways to resize photos with free software, such as IrfanView or The Gimp.

Within MS Word:
Don’t change the viewable size within Word (e.g. dragging the corners of the photo). Word will store the image in its original size. Resize the photo before inserting it into Word.

Adobe PDF:
Check the conversion settings.

Check the sizes of all files (Word, pdf, .jpeg) before sending them.

Be considerate and don’t send photos in their original size. Especially if you don’t know what type of connection the recipient is using.

It’s five minutes for you versus 30 minutes of expensive download time on a plain old telephone connection for them.