making a picture a smaller file

[curious and learning]

Please excuse my ignorance, I am new to all of this. I have tried to attach a picture for comments but it keeps telling me my file is too large. Is there a way to make it smaller? How much will this compromise the quality? Thanks in advance for any help or tips you may offer!

[Michael Fanelli]

Please excuse my ignorance, I am new to all of this. I have tried to attach a picture for comments but it keeps telling me my file is too large. Is there a way to make it smaller? How much will this compromise the quality? Thanks in advance for any help or tips you may offer!

Use a higher jpeg compression. Yes, it will hurt the quality but, most of the time, you can't really see it on a computer screen.

[curious and learning]

I wasnt joking about the ignorance thing. How do I compress the file?

[mdcalaska]

Open image in whatever editing program you use, select Edit, Image Size, Constrain proportions - and resize to ~480 pixels x (whatever the contrained size comes up - hopefully not too much more than 640).

Use 72 dpi - the standard for screen veiwing.

Save file with different name (as a .jpg) so you don't permanently change your "digital negative" file.

Depending on editing program, you may have numerous choices for setting the "compression". Baseline standard, medium is decent choice.

[curious and learning]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

[another view]

Yes - the main thing is to reduce the size. 600 pixels on the longest side is probably fine and I'd guess that most of the images posted here are close to that. This will be 600x400 or 600x450, depending on the camera. I usually "save as" to my desktop so it's easy to find, but whatever works for you.

Not to cause confusion, but 72dpi really doesn't apply to an image that's only looked at on a screen. I'm just saying this is one step you don't need to worry about if you're only looking at the image on the screen (a 600x400 will be too small to print anyway).

The image will be displayed in the number of pixels that are in the file. There is no dimension (in inches or mm) when we're talking about looking at an image on a screen or thru a digital projector; only in a print. There's a recent thread in the Digital Imaging forum that talks about this if you're interested, the title is something like "X pixels is what size" or something like that.

[ken1953]

Also, before trying to post here...make sure the file is not larger than 195kb...if it is, just make your dimensions slightly smaller. As I have learned...the hard way...640x480 and 195kb max...hehe hope this helps