Picture File Sizes?

[raceboy]

Probably a stupid question but.........
If I download pictures from my digital camera to the computer the file sizes are quite large, can I shrink them down once they are here or do I need to take them on a smaller setting on the camera?
all a bit new to this sorry

[Plotloss]

Depends

If you arent concerned about clarity of the photo when its taken use the smaller setting.

If you are concerned about the quality, which I imagine you are, keep the pics on the camera as big as you can and then get hold of Paint Shop Pro or similar to resize the pictures on the PC.

This will drop the file size...

[raceboy]

I've got Photoshop, can I do it in there?

[Plotloss]

raceboy said:

I've got Photoshop, can I do it in there?

Yep Image>Resize I think...

[raceboy]

Sorted, cheers down from 700+ to 44

[Mrs Fish]

Its under IMAGE at the top bar. Then IMAGE SIZE.

For uploading on the web you can also got to SAVE FOR WEB too which is under FILE.

You need to aim for the images to be around the 250k mark.

[Mrs Fish]

oops too late, got distracted by boss, mid post

[Ballistic Banana]

After Re-sizing as to not go to small, you can go down File to export and then Jpeg optimize.
Then you can fiddle about with how much quality you want to loose.(mainly used for putting photos on web me thinks)

BB

[dugless]

raceboy said:

Probably a stupid question but......... If I download pictures from my digital camera to the computer the file sizes are quite large, can I shrink them down once they are here or do I need to take them on a smaller setting on the camera? all a bit new to this sorry

if using windows xp,right click on the photo file and edit,dont resize... ,then goto ' save as ' amd save it,it doesnt lose any visible quality or size,but the mb size on the pc is reduced,usualy its a 1/6th of the original mb size, but the resolution is maintaned.

[Tripps]

You might well find that you can resave the pictures from most digital cameras as the same JPEG resolution and quality and have a lower file size than the original veraion.

The reason being that the less powerful processor in a camera has to compromise upon the amount of image compression it can acheive in order to take the picture in a reasonable amount of time.

I've not tested this on an SLR camera, but the difference in sizes after re-saving on all our cameras is very noticeable.

However, it should be noted that the cameras are getting towards the levels that can be achieved by a PC, my wife's Ixus 500 (5h generation 5 megapixel) saves it images to a size just larger than her previous 1st generation, 2 megapixel Ixus, both running at top resolution and quality settings.

Please note that saving the file like this might well lose all the camera settings stored within the original JPEG.

[Muncher]

www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/downloads/powertoys.asp

Install that, then whenever you right click on an image you can resize it As simple as it gets