One of the biggest questions we get is about resizing images from their full resolution size to a more manageable size. In this article we will talk about why you want to shoot in large sizes and then re-size the images for other things.
We will start with your camera's pixel rating. Most people today have a digital camera that uses 6 or more mega pixels of recording power. What does this mean though? Well the simple answer is that your rating is directly ralated to the area of your recording chip. If you take the width of the chip and multiply it by the height, you get your mega pixel rating. Let's go to our 6 mega pixel camera. If your chip is 3000 pixels wide x 2000 pixels high it would be a 6 mega pixel camera. If you have all those pixels of recording power, make sure you are using them by setting your camera to it's highest possible quality setting.
For some this might seem to be a silly statement. However, one of the most common problems we see is, people trying to get the largest number of pictures possible on their cameras media card. While they don't have to change their card very often, they are sacrificing quality for quantity. In order for the camera to deliver such a high number of pictures only a small portion of the recording chips' total pixel count is being used. So first things first, set your camera to the highest .jpg rating available on your camera and leave it there. If you are already doing this or shooting in RAW then you are ahead of the game here.
So in an article about re-sizing images to a smaller size, why would we tell you to shoot them in the largest possible size your camera can record? Because you might actually want to print one of these elctronic masterpieces some day and you can't do that very well with teeny images. The ole' saying about your camera goes " It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it." Shoot large.
This does pose the problem of resizing your images for internet transport. First before you do any resizing, back up your images to your computer or to a CD or DVD for storage or better yet, both. Then you will want to go through the steps to resize the image. This way if you make a mistake in the process you will always have a good original image to work with.
Those that choose not to resize their images before emailing them will send their auntie something that looks like this rather than what you see above.
This makes your viewer scroll to see the whole image, not to mention the mail box wait time to download such a file and the possibility of bombing someones email all together. So Be Kind, Resize!
Begining in Windows by opening up your image folder. If you are using Windows XP, ( some of us still believe) you can look to the left, in the little blue window pane, you will see an option to email an image.
Click on it to get the dialog box then resize to the email size you want. Don't worry, the computer will not resize your big file so that you can't print it later if you want. Instead the program will make a copy of the big file and resize that for emailing.
Choose a 1024x768 size if you want the viewer to see the image large, smaller 640x480 if you want just a small pic to be sent. If you can still find it there are specialized toys for xp that we installed on our computer as well that would allow you to resize any image you right clicked on. Go to google and search windows xp power tools.
If you are using Windows Vista, you can email any image or a group of them by first selecting the images in an open folder then clicking on the "email" option at the top of the open window. When you do , it will again ask you what size you want the final images to be resized to.
If you have a Mac, you can attach your image to your email, then drag and drop the image into the new message window. In the bottom right corner you will see the size of the image and you can get a pop up window to display the different sizes you might want to send the picture as ( smaller than the original ) simply select and send the email.
While most people use resize functions to email, what if you just want to resize an image for use in say.... a web page or to put on a newsletter etc. For this if you are not familiar with Photoshop or another image manipulation program, you can use Picasa a google product. Just visit www.picasa.google.com to get started. It is a free program and will allow you to do resize images easily.
Let's recap Please when emailing be kind resize, start large go small for internet emails and clean your media cards for future use by backing up your files a double save is best. This will put you in control of your images rather than the other way around. - Aloha
