It seems everyone has a digital camera or is getting digital files from the film they shoot these days. I’m often asked by friends and family, “How do I resize pictures for the Internet or to send to family by email?”
There are many ways to answer this question depending on what software you’re using but for this exercise I’m going to recommend you download the free program Irfanview. It’s only an 804kb download so it will only take a few minutes over dial-up. Once the file is on your computer you should install IrfanView by double clicking the file.
Resizing a photo with IrfanView for viewing on screen or posting on the Internet
So let’s say you want to send a photo to a friend by email. You’re only concerned about them viewing it on screen and not printing the image.
- Open your photo in IrfanView
- From the Image menu select Resize/Resample
- In the Resize/Resample image dialog box select the 640×480 Pixels button and click OK. Or you may wish to choose another size but remember not to go too large - for transferring files by email or posting on the Internet you probably want to keep the longest dimension around 600 pixels like the 640×480 we chose earlier.
- Now from the File menu select Save As
- In the File Name box rename the photo and under Save as type: be sure to select JPG if not already selected and in the JPG/GIF Save Options box move the Save Quality slider to about 60% then click Save (you may wish to experiment with the quality but the higher the quality the larger the file size) .
- Now attach this new file to an email or upload to your website
Remember that this is just a simple approach to sizing digital photos for email and web use and is certainly not comprehensive. There’s much more that we could discuss relating to using photos on websites etc. But this should at least get you started uploading and sharing your photos with family and friends.