HOW TO: Size your photos so you can use them in your signature

[WebmasterKathy]

Today's digital cameras take great photos, and save them as large files. That's great for printing and graphics work, but not so great for displaying your photos on the web.

Our signature guidelines say that you can have up to three separate images in your sig, the total file size of all of the graphics in your sig have to be 50K or less, and each image can be up to 550 pixels wide and 200 pixels tall. If you take a digital photo and upload it to use in a post, you're probably going wind up with a HUGE image.

So what do you do? You'll need to edit the photo on your computer before you upload it to your photo sharing site.

The actual commands to do this are going to be a little different from program to program, but I can explain how to do it in a couple of common software applications, and you should be able to figure out how to do something similar in whatever graphics software you have. Pretty much every digital camera comes with a graphics editor. Drawing programs and tools like Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements are also very popular. Microsoft Photo Editor is bundled in with Microsoft Office.

Regardless of which program you're using, these are the basic steps you'll follow:

1) Launch your graphics editor.

2) Open the file containing your photo

3) Crop the photo so that only the part of the image you care about is showing. No sense wasting limited screen space on background stuff!

Usually, cropping is done by drawing a box around the part of the image you want to keep, then choosing commands like "Edit, Crop" or "Image, Crop."​

4) Adjust the IMAGE SIZE so that it is less than 550x200 pixels

Once you've cropped the picture, reduce it to the precise size in pixels that you want. Look for commands like "Image, Resize" and some sort of box that will let you adjust height and/or width. Often, you can choose whether these numbers are pixels, inches, or centimeters. You should be able to enter either height or width, and the other will adjust automatically.​

5) Save the file (as a .jpg image), adjusting the FILE SIZE to less than 50K.

This could be very different from program to program. In Photoshop Elements, choose SAVE AS, specify JPEG as the file type, and click SAVE. You'll then get a JPEG OPTIONS box that displays the current file size, and has a slider bar you adjust to reduce the file size.​

6) Upload your image to www.wdwinfo.com/photopost, or another web site that will allow you to create a link to your image.

7) Place a link to your photo in your signature, surrounded by

tags.


(edited to reflect the new signature guideline numbers.)

 

[MiaSRN62]

Thanks again Kathy ! I have a Kodak dig camera, so I'll see what kind of software they offer to resize.....I'll figure this out one way or another. lol

 

[Blondie]

Thanks! I'll give it a try!

 

[WebmasterKathy]

*bump*

 

[MiaSRN62]

I have tried for days to resize my Kodak dig pictures on my computer. Kodak's software only allows me to crop, not resize ? It's a shame because I really can't use any of my dig pics on the dis boards. I can only use the ones that I take with my regular 35 mm and scan. My HP scanner allows me to resize. If anyone has any experience with Kodak dig software and knows how to resize (aka make the pics smaller), I'd appreciate any help. I have a Kodak DX7440 camera.
Thanks

 

[Valentine]

thanks Kathy!!! Finally.. an answer!! LOL!! come to find out I was in the right place all the time.. but didn't know I had to enter the new size.. Great!! I will play with it now!! Hopefully this will cut down all of the "resize my pic" request you hard working Mods are getting lately!!!

Thanks for everything!!!!

Kathy

 

[WebmasterKathy]

a little *bump*.

 

[MiaSRN62]

I appreciate the bump Kathy. I still have not figured out how to resize my dig photos. If anyone out there has a Kodak dig camera and uses the software that came with it, can you please offer suggestions on how to resize ? I can't use any of my photos here on the dis boards because they're way too big. Thanks

 

[WebmasterKathy]

Maria,

What's the name of the software that came with your camera?

 

[MiaSRN62]

Hi Kathy,
It's called Kodak Easyshare. It allows me to auto enhance my pic.....lighten it....get rid of red eye..... etc. It also allows me to crop my pic, but this is not the same as resizing because you lose parts of the picture when you crop. Sometimes I take closeups and cropping it would just ruin the whole pic. When I used to use a regular 35 mm camera, I would scan the pics using Hewlett Packard scanner software and that would allow me to resize. But for some reason I cannot figure out resizing with the Easyshare software.
Thanks.

 

[Caskbill]

Sometimes resizing is only done when a photo is saved. Look at your software and see if you have a Save As option. If there, sometimes this option allows you to save the photo under a different type of format (EG save it as a bitmap, Jpeg, GIF, etc) and may also have an options panel that allows you to change the size and set resolution (compression) for the new Save As photo. They do it this way sometimes so your original photo is not changed in case you need to get back to it.

If you find you have something like that, let us know.

 

[MiaSRN62]

Sometimes resizing is only done when a photo is saved. Look at your software and see if you have a Save As option. If there, sometimes this option allows you to save the photo under a different type of format (EG save it as a bitmap, Jpeg, GIF, etc) and may also have an options panel that allows you to change the size and set resolution (compression)

My Hewlett Packard scanner works this way. But with my Kodak dig camera I simply plug in the USB cable and my pics automatically load into my Kodak Easyshare folder that was created when I downloaded the Easyshare software.
I appreciate your input Caskbill because I know you are truly a tech guru. I'll keep trying and keep you posted ! Thanks for the help

 

[WebmasterKathy]

Okay, I've downloaded and played with the Kodak Easyshare software... it really doesn't include much in the way of editing tools. And I can't find any way to control your image size.

If you click on Tools/Preferences and choose the Options tab, you do have a very rudimentary slider bar that you can adjust to save your images as a smaller/lower resolution or a larger/higher resolution. But they don't give you any real control over this. Ick.

This looks like software that you can use to do only *very* rudimentary editing. Hmmm...

 

[MiaSRN62]

This looks like software that you can use to do only *very* rudimentary editing. Hmmm...

Thanks for checking it out Kathy. I may be on to something. I went into my Easyshare folder and "right" clicked on a photo. There is an option that says "resize". I'm getting pretty tired tonight but I'll look further into this tommorrow.

 

[WebmasterKathy]

"Resize" sounds VERY promising, Maria! I'll be watching to see if that's the solution for you.

 

[MiaSRN62]

I did it Kathy and Caskbill ! Thanks for your input and advice

 

[iluvdisney]

test

 

[iluvdisney]

Trying again

 

[WebmasterKathy]

Yay, Mary!!! You did it!

 

[Michelle2]

Wow, Mary that plate is beautiful!
I have a question...in the opening post (which is sooo helpful by the way, thanks WebmasterKathy!) it said the signature guidelines was 420w x 400h pixels, but in another signature guidelines post it said the max allowed was 500w and 200h pixels max. I have been clicking on the properties of alot of people's signatures, and they are around what mine are..some are even 400w by 300h. Which is it? I can easily resize mine smaller if I have to, but at the time I submitted it I went by the 420 by 400 guideline. Just wanted to know so that I am not doing anything wrong. Thanks!