The size of your images is important depending on what you want to do with them. If you want your photos to be printed for example, it is better to keep them large as the quality is better. Low quality images are a lot more noticeable in prints.
But if you want to upload your images to the internet (Flickr or Facebook for example), or email them to someone, it is a lot easier if they are smaller. The lower quality isn’t noticeable on a screen – unless you decrease the size too much. Personally I wouldn’t make my images much less than 800 pixels wide.
Some people have said that they have had trouble emailing images or uploading them to facebook. This could be due to the image size being too big. I have tried to upload large images to facebook and they just disappeared. Large images on an email sometimes get stuck in my outbox or bounceback from the intended recipients.
Here I am going to show you how to reduce the image size in Photoshop. I do not have Elements but I hope that it will be similar. If club members would like me to go through this in other software, I will investigate for you.
Please see the diagrams below.
At the top click on where it says Image. Then in the drop-down menu, click on Image size.
Alternatively, you can press Alt + Ctrl + I
An Image Size dialogue box will appear.
Make sure that the drop-down box to the right of where it says width is on pixels.
For Flickr, the maximum width in a landscape photo is 2048 pixels. So when sending Photo of the Month entries in, please make sure that your images are no wider than this.
So type in 2048 in the width box.
But if your image is portrait (taller than it is wide) please type 2048 into the height box.
By default, the little link icon that I’ve pointed a red arrow at means that when you change the width, the height is automatically changed in proportion. And vice versa.
*Please note that when sending photos to me for the gallery, I prefer the images to be 800 pixels high, no matter if they are landscape or protrait.
Then click OK.
Then click on file at the top, then down to Save As.
Clicking Save As instead of saving means that you are making a new file and not saving over your old image. This is handy as it means you keep the original large size of the image.
This is where you get to choose where to save your new version of your image. And you can re-name it if you want, by typing in the box beside where it says file name – you can see it is currently high-lighted in blue.
A new dialogue box will pop up giving you JPEG options that go from 1-12. I suggest taking it down to 10. It is still high quality but reduces the overall file size.
You can see on the right I have pointed an arrow to some numbers, 728.9k. This number will go down the more you reduce the file size. I would say that this is a good size for emailing and uploading.
Everybody’s email is different, but I would say that with this size image, you could send around five at a time on one email.
Then click OK and your image is saved.
Another handy tip is using rulers.
If you cannot see rulers along the left hand edge and top of your image, click on View, then rulers.
Or alternatively, click on Ctrl + R.
Rulers can come in a variety of increments.
If you put your mouse over the actual area where the ruler is (where I have pointed the arrow for example), right click. This will make a menu come up which lets you choose if your ruler is in Pixels, Inches, Centimetres, etc.
Just highlight which one you prefer and a little tick will appear next to it.
This way you can always see the size of your image.
