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
- Right click on the image and select ‘Edit’. (This should bring up Windows Paint).
- On the menu bar at the top, select Image -> Attributes…
- 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.
- 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
- Right click on the image and select ‘Edit’. (This should bring up Windows Paint).
- On the menu bar at the top, select Image -> Stretch/Skew…
- 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.
- 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:
- Click the Tools menu.
- Select Options.
- Click the Email tab.
- 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.
- Click OK.
Lazy workaround via Flickr
I sometimes use Flickr as a lazy workaround.
- Upload or email photo to the Flickr stream.
- Go to the photo page and select All Sizes.
- 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.
Just got back from visiting family in beautiful Blantyre. It’s
rainy season now and there are regular rain showers every other
day. Everything is green and lush. The sun is hot. The air is
moist. And the shopping centres and outdoor markets of Blantyre
are busy with holiday shopping. And except for a couple of power
cuts and short water supply intermissions, I had good access to
Blantyre’s “Big Three” from my part of town.
In search of the best Internet connection in
Blantyre To connect with my MBA study group, I needed an
internet connection. Here are some of my findings and
observations regarding Internet for private use.
Internet service providers in Blantyre include:
Skyband ”“ the
pricing is on the high end; suitable for corporate
customers.MTLGlobeSDNP
Mobile phone networks offer data services as well:
Zain ”“ a friend connects to the mobile Internet on his iPhone
using Zain.TNM
First, I tried TNM, but unfortunately they did not have any USB
dongles in stock at the Chichiri sales office.
Next I tried Globe’s MAX 4G
service. This promised the best connection speeds, but
unfortunately the reception in my part of Blantyre was less than
optimal. Instead of 4 LEDs lighting up, I only got between 2 and
3. And even then, the router showed a high fluctuation in
signals. I kept losing my Skype audio connection when the signal
dropped. When I got a strong signal it was speedy. But ”“ due to
my geographic position ”“ the signal strength was unpredictable. I
contacted Globe support and they wanted to update the firmware of
the router and stated that they were some problems with Skype,
which they had resolved. If you don’t need audio or video
streaming and if coverage in your area is good, then Globe MAX 4G
is a good and viable option. But check the signal strength
beforehand. Following the signal fluctuations, I started
speculating about the quality of the provided Globe router, the
influence of the weather, etc. When I returned the router, Globe
suggested installing an external antenna to boost the wifi
signal. At the end of the day, I think your geographic position
and proximity to the signal decides whether this solution will
work for you or not.
MTL (Malawi Telecommunications Limited) offers a wireless
broadband product called MTL Liberty. A friend in Namiwawa
strongly recommended it. The company is also advertising a new
fibre optic cable connection in all major newspapers. I walked
into an MTL shop near FMB in Blantyre to find out more about the
fibre optic cable connection. The MTL sales person said that this
will indeed connect Malawi to the Seacom cable and improve the
Internet backbone, but it was not yet connected. He advised me to
go to the MTL headquarters for more information. I didn’t have
time to follow up on this.
I went back to TNM; this time to the head office in Livingstone
Towers. The sales consultant was very savvy and explained the
various data bundling options very well. I found out that if I
have a postpaid TNM sim card, I can easily add mobile data
services. The consultant advised me to wait another week and buy
a 3G USB dongle. He said the 3G USB modem will go on sale on 30th
December 2009. TNM is currently testing 3G in parts of Blantyre.
Automatic software downloads Coming from
Switzerland and a flat rate setup where I don’t care how many MBs
are downloaded in the background, to a price plan where every MB
counts, I realized how dependent software has become on a high
speed internet connection. I was unable to download the latest
Symantec Norton anti-virus update on my mom’s laptop via Globe
Wifi at Chichiri because Norton timed out after 6 MB. I tried 3
times before I gave up. Unfortunately iGetter didn’t help cos
Norton connects directly from the app. All kinds of software from
Adobe Reader to Mozilla Firefox want to connect and download
updates at regular intervals. It’s OK if you’re using a flat rate
but if every kB costs extra time and money”¦
Software companies should consider alternative options for
developing countries. Cloud computing is not yet available
everywhere.
My mom had to go to SDNP to get her legally purchased version of
MS Office registered *online*. What a hassle.
Flat rates connections are not yet very widespread in Malawi and
usually only corporate customers can afford them. Most of my
friends have Internet at their workplace or on their mobile
handset only.
Opera 10 I strongly recommend getting Opera.
Opera Turbo loads web pages much faster and compresses images.
Thank you to Appfrica for their excellent article pointing to
resources and tools.
Web design Pages optimized for mobile internet
and simple HTML load much faster than CMS-based web pages.
I was able to access the mobile version of chiperoni.ch at an
acceptable speed. While other sites failed to display.
If you are targeting developing countries, please consider this
in your web design.
Resize photos for lower bandwidth Same for
emails. My mom still connects using dial-up. Downloading 1.2 MB
takes 20 to 30 minutes and many times the connection breaks. And
she pays for the length of the dial-up connection. But, so many
people from Europe forget
to resize their photos for lower bandwidth. Please resize
your photos before sending!
In Picasa 3 it’s really easy. Go to Tools > Options
> Email and select a new size such as 640 pixel:
You can then email a photo from the Picasa interface.
Share this:EmailTwitterFacebookTumblrGooglePrint
Related posts:
Hong Kong
Restaurant in Blantyre, Malawi OpenStreetMap of Blantyre
Back from Blantyre My BlogCamp Switzerland
Talk fring-fring Malawi Twitterers
and by the way, an other lazy thing for windows xp users is to select the images and then right-click and choose “send via email”. This will open a dialog that asks whether you want to resize the images and also gives you three options (640, 800 & 1024px). An empty email with the resized images opens (probably outlook express). I then just copy the images to my desktop or somewhere. Btw. Outlook Express or Outlook have to be set up in case they are not. I think its worthwhile to set up a dummy account if you do not intend to use them for email.
Oh, just the very same problems over here! With the webmail service GMX it is possible to redirect mails by size. All mails that exceed 500KB are sent to my account. Most of them are M$ Word documents with images inserted directly from a digital camera. Most people don’t know, word has a function to reduce the size built in somewhere…
I love the flickr lazy workaround! I use it all the time!