E-mail picture size?

[dkpbxman]

I apologize if this question has been asked and answered in the past. I looked through a few pages of old posts and couldn't find it.

I have an Olympus D-540 Zoom and one of the best reasons for having a digital camera is the ability to easily E-mail pictures to other people. My problem is that the default settings in the camera, while producing a good picture, create a file so big that whoever I send it to has to view the picture a section at a time.
Can I adjust the file size somehow so the recipient sees the entire picture at once?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Dan

[Photo-John]

Adjusting the file size shouldn't be a problem. I resize the dimensions to a good screen size and the use "Save for Web" in Photoshop to compress and save as JPEG. I always make my Web images 632 pixels on the long dimension. Anything between 600 and 800 is goo, in my opinion. The idea is to make the image a size that displays well on a computer monitor and a Web browser. The Photoshop "Save for Web" option allows me to fine-tune the JPEG compression so I get the best compromise between file size and image quality. I usually shoot for a file size of 100-150k.

What image editing software do you have available? Check it for resizing capabilities. And let us know if you have more questions.

[another view]

Those sizes are good, and probably about the size of most of the displayed images you see here. You will need software to re-size these images though, which your camera probably came with (some version of Adobe Photoshop?). The resolution may be adjustable in the camera but probably not down to anywhere close to this size. FWIW, I usually use 600 x 450 pixels.

[Speed]

I apologize if this question has been asked and answered in the past. I looked through a few pages of old posts and couldn't find it.

I have an Olympus D-540 Zoom and one of the best reasons for having a digital camera is the ability to easily E-mail pictures to other people. My problem is that the default settings in the camera, while producing a good picture, create a file so big that whoever I send it to has to view the picture a section at a time.
Can I adjust the file size somehow so the recipient sees the entire picture at once?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Dan

I usually resize my photo's in Photoshop Elements. I find that 640 pixels across is a good size for emailing folks, as the file size doesn't choke the email server.

As PhotoJohn said, anything up to 800 pixels will display the entire image on the average computer screen.

Also, check your camera's manual, and see if there is a way to change the size of the image you shoot. It's a lot easier (read quicker) to shoot at 640 pixels, than to resize them later.

[dkpbxman]

Thanks Photo-John, another view and Speed for your replies.

At first I was going to just use my "Paint" program to "Stretch/Skew" the files to reduce them to 640 x 480. Then I read the directions for the camera (they really do work!--Duh!) , pressed a few buttons and found out that the resolution was set at 2048 x 1626!! Brought it down to 640 x 480.
Thanks again

Dan

[Photo-John]

Don't start shooting just for e-mail. That's a bad road to go down and it will surely result in tragedy. When you shoot at low resolution you can never resize larger. But you can always resize your images smaller. Take it from someone who's been there before. I have some great images that I shot at low resolution that will never be good for anything other than looking at on the computer. You bought a high resolution camera for the quality, right? Don't throw it all away by shooting at low resolution. Always shoot at the maximum and resize for your needs. That's the right way to do it.

[dkpbxman]

Good point-changed it back.