How Can I Resize
My Images so I can Use Them on the Web?
This article is in
response to that question. I've lost count of how many times I've been asked it.
Well, the answer is:
You Need Image Editing Software.
Personally, I
use Photoshop CS2, but Photoshop Elements will work just as well, and so will a
number of other programs including some shareware programs. Just do a Google
search for photo editing software.
So, let's see how it's done.
In
other articles we have suggested that you set your camera to capture either RAW
files, or at least the largest possible JPEG files, or both. This means that you
will be creating extremely large files of at least 6 megabites, maybe more. So,
from time to time, for one reason or another, you will need to resize the images
you make in your camera and make them more manageable. This might be because you
want to email them, send them out as attachments to emails, or even to use them
in online articles.
Typically, images meant for publication in a glossy magazine, book or stock
photo agency will need to be sent as a large file at the best possible
resolution. Online stock photo agencies are geared toward receiving up-loaded,
large image files, but magazine and book publishers are not. You will need to
send those images on a disk by regular mail or carrier, such as UPS or FedEx. So
there’s no need to downsize them.
To send
your images by email, however, you will need to downsize. If you’ve ever
received an email with a 6mb image attached you’ll know why: it takes forever to
download it.
So, how
do we do it?
The
first thing to do, by one method or another, is to transfer you images to your
computer. That done, you will need an editing program and, as Photoshop is the
publishing industry standard, it should be either Photoshop or Photoshop
Elements.
The
first step, then, is to launch the program. When it opens you will be faced with
a screen that looks something like this:
So,
now you go to the tool bar at the top and click on “File.” This will bring up a
drop-down menu. Select “Browse,” as you see in the screen-shot below.
The
“Browse” option will take you to the next screen which should look something
like this:
Now you scroll down the
options you see in the small window to the left until you find the find the file
containing your images. Double click on the selected image and you will see
something like this:
Looking
at the screen-shot above, you can see I selected “Image” in the tool bar and
then scrolled down to the “Image Size” option. Clicking on that will bring up a
screen that looks like this:
Looking
again at the screen-shot above, you can see the box in the center. This box
contains your image size as it is now: in pixels at the top, in inches at the
center, and the resolution in dots per inch is just below that – in this case
300 DPI. Now, to resize the image, all we have to do is change one of the
dimensions in inches – from 13 to say 6 – and the dots per inch (DPI) from 300
to 72 (for on-screen viewing) like this:
We
now click “OK” and are taken to the back to the screen as you see below
We now need to “Save As.” If we don’t, we’ll
lose our original size JPEG. So, as you see above, go to “File” on the tool bar,
select “Save As” and you be taken to a screen that looks like this:
Choose
a location file where you’d like to deposit the new JPEG for future use, change
the name and then select JPG, and then click on “Save.” This will take you to a
final screen: this one:
The
slider give you the size and resolution of your new file: slide it to the right
for maximum “12” or to the left for the smallest file “1.” The baseline should
be selected “optimized.” And that’s all there is to it.
Blair Howard
is a professional photojournalist
www.blairhoward.com and chief creative officer and instructor of digital
photography at www.AIOPonline.org.
This article is copyright
© Blair Howard 2006. All rights reserved. You can
reprint this article for free but you must retain the internal links and the
credit line at the bottom of the article intact.
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