hi again.
just need clarification on something i just noticed about microsoft photo editor.

i am still learning photo scanning techniques and using elements 3.0 to crop/resize/edit photos etc, and i use microsoft photo editor as my default photo viewer on my pc (as a viewer i love it) but i noticed it has an ability to resize photos and alter the image file size by 75% seemingly without altering the photos attributes.

examle as follows:

1. scanned a photo in my scanner using 300dpi scan res and 75dpi output res, the photo scanned at 1486x1044 pixels and was 355kb file size.
2. imported the photo into elements 3.0, cropped it at 6x4, resized at 300dpi @ 1800x1200 pixels @ 1.17mb file size.
3. i then opened the photo in MS photo editor, resized it down 50% to 900x600 pixels, giving me a file size of 143kb.
4. i then resized it back up 200% to 1800x1200 in photo editor and got a file size of 341kb.
5. i then imported that 1800x1200 photo back into elements 3.o to check its attributes, and it still gave me 1800x1200 @ 300dpi.

question ??? why does MS photo editor seemingly take a large file like mine from elements and resize it down, then back to normal size and reduce the file size by about 75% while seemingly the quality still appears the same.
even when zoomed to 1600%) i noticed that the pixels still seem the same size and quality looks as good in both the elements version and the photo editor version of the same 1800x1200 x 300dpi photo.
i dont want to degrade my elements photos in any way, but im thinking that i can simply use photo editor purely to resize my photos (down in size) to send to people by email or to post on websites etc.

any thoughts would be appreciated as always.....GLEN