New guy here that needs some help

[Dane]

I use to pride myself for doing a pretty good job using and knowing a bit about my 35mm SLR Cannon but now, the world of digital cameras have me at a loss. I've had my Olympus C-4000 digital camera for a while and still can't figure out how to reduce the physical size of a picture without distorting or making the picture look out of focus. Can someone help me with this please?

[Rocket_Scientist]

Well, if you have PhotoShop, or PhotoShop Elements, you can choose to resize the image. Be sure to constrain the proportion, and you can select pixels, or dpi, and even the type of re-sampling algorithm. Is this not what you are asking?

Oh.. and, of course, you can crop it to a smaller size...

[drg]

Are you trying to edit in camera? I had a C-4000 (still do somewhere) and I believe I remember that it allowed some kind of cropping in camera??

Reducing the size shouldn't make the picture look out of focus, in fact it should have the opposite effect. Distortion also should not be a problem unless with an external image editing program the proportions are being changed.

A few more details on how and what you are attempting should help us to get this straightened out!

Welcome to PR and we'll look forward to photos once we get you and the camera on 'friendly' terms.

[Dane]

The resolution is great at the default size when I upload pictures to my desktop PC. I am a member of a few message boards that have a size limit on pictures uploaded to their sites. I used the software that came with the camera and Windows XP OS software to manipulate pictures. I can crop, change a square picture to rectangular but I haven't had any success reducing the size down to a, like avatar 100x100 pixels or any other size smaller than the default size. The picture of my Gold WIng is an example. It's not the worst example of my problem. The original size of the this same shot is a very nice clear pictures. This is a great camera, I just wish I could figure out how to use it.

[WsW-WYATT-EARP]

sounds to me like you are distorting the photo in your resizing - you are trying to resize this to 100x100 and that will distort the height - as rocket scientist said you need to constrain the proportion - (there should be a link between the width and height when resizing) when you resize the longer dimension (width) then the height should also resize to keep the proportion.

sounds like you are trying to do each individually and to keep clarity you need to let the software automatically decide the size of the other side.

[Frog]

For posting here and some other places there is a 640 limit on the longest side.
Windows has a handy power toy that will resize your pics for you.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/d...powertoys.mspx
After loading, right click your photo and there will be a resize picture option.
There's also a raw image thumbnail viewer which I find very handy.

[freygr]

If you have Coral Paint, Thumbs Plus, or PhotoShop (any version), or Abode Elements it is easy. The selection for resizing varies from program to program, it label resize in Thumbs Plus, or in Elements or Photoshop, it's under image size. There is a check box named constrain proportions, it must be check other wise the photo will be distorted, but the resample box must not be checked. Then change the units to pixels on the longest side and enter 100. The program will resize the image. You can always crop to a square before resizing.

[Dane]

sounds to me like you are distorting the photo in your resizing - you are trying to resize this to 100x100 and that will distort the height - as rocket scientist said you need to constrain the proportion - (there should be a link between the width and height when resizing) when you resize the longer dimension (width) then the height should also resize to keep the proportion.

sounds like you are trying to do each individually and to keep clarity you need to let the software automatically decide the size of the other side.

Sorry for misleading you. I was only using 100x100 as an example not necessarily the shape of it. I understand the need for keeping the proportion of a picture vertical and horizontal. My problem is that, I use my photo editing program(s) and use the resize option only and my picture all get fuzzy when I attempt to down-size over-all by 30% for example. Just as the example picture that I included with my original post.

[another view]

I think I see what you're looking at. For example the black trim around the bottom of the headlight; the line looks a little jagged.

One thing about avatars - most sites require them to be so compressed that they usually will look kind of odd. Sometimes there's an option to host an avatar at a remote site, and have it display as a link. This works pretty well and I've used a free account at photobucket.com to do this and also post images on sites where they don't have direct uploading.

In the Goldwing shot, it looks like there might be a setting that's off with the way the image is being resized. The way the software resizes the images may or may not leave artifacts like the one I mentioned above, but one that usually works pretty well is Irfanview. It's free, too! I wrote a step-by-step here for Irfanview.

[freygr]

Sorry for misleading you. I was only using 100x100 as an example not necessarily the shape of it. I understand the need for keeping the proportion of a picture vertical and horizontal. My problem is that, I use my photo editing program(s) and use the resize option only and my picture all get fuzzy when I attempt to down-size over-all by 30% for example. Just as the example picture that I included with my original post.

Resizing is like applying a sharping filter. Before you resize try burring the image. You may have to bur more the smaller the image is resized to. You will have to just experiment because I don't resize that small that often, maybe once in 5 years.