How To Resize Digital Photos

So... you've taken this great photo for an article, but you need to upload or display it on the web? Here's how to get that large digital photo down to a reasonable size using some of the most commonly available editing programs.

Image editing programs can work just as well for resizing projects as specialized photo editing programs. Three of the most common image editing programs are Paint, Adobe Photoshop, and Gimp.

• Paint is a default, basic, image editor that comes as part of the Windows operating system. While it’s convenient, the quality of pictures scaled in Paint won’t be very good.
• Photoshop is a high-end graphics editing program with many functions. Photoshop isn’t needed for the purposes of this project; it produces high-quality images with a minimal loss of resolution, but is very expensive.
• Gimp is a free image editing program, which can produce high-quality graphics and has many of the same functions as Photoshop. Unlike Photoshop, however, Gimp is an open-source program available for download on the Web (www.gimp.org).

Paint

1. Open the file. (File > Open)
2. Select "Stretch/Skew", found on the image menu.
3. Enter equal percentages in the boxes that say "100%".
4. Click "OK".
5. Click "File" and "Save As"
6. Select an appropriate file type. Jpg works best for wikiHow articles.
7. Save the image as a new file.

Photoshop

1. Open the image in Photoshop by clicking on File > Open.
2. Select the “image size” command by clicking on Image > Image Size.
3. Select a new width or length for the image (measurements are in pixels); Photoshop will automatically scale the other measurement to match.
4. Click "OK" to resize the image.
5. Save the image as a new file.

GIMP

1. Open the Photo by clicking on File > Open.
2. Click on "Image"
3. Select "Scale Image"
4. Use the Up and Down arrows beside the pixel sizes to increase or decrease the image size.
5. Alternatively, just select one of the axes and type in the number of pixels you want. The axes are linked, so the other box should adjust to the correct ratio when you hit "enter" or "ok".
6. Save the image as a new file.

Windows Photo Manager

1. Open the file.
2. Click on "Picture"
3. Select "Resize"
4. Click on "Percentage of Original width x height", in the right-hand dialog box.
5. Enter a percentage (0-100) and click "enter".
6. Click on "File"
7. Select "Save As"
8. Select the appropriate format.
9. Save.

Picasa

1. Select your image and press "Export".
2. Click on "Image Size Options" and select the "Resize To" button.
3. Adjust the slider. The number of pixels you select with the slider determines the length or height of the photo (whichever is longer). The other dimension is determined automatically.
4. Select the desired image quality for your photo using the "Image Quality" drop-down menu. "Custom" will enable you to select your own value.
5. Save.

Tips

• You can also use any other image or photo editing program to do this. The basic principle is the same: open, resize, and save. Only the menus change.
• To make the image files as small as possible, they need to be saved in the right file format. The three most common formats are JPG, GIF, and PNG.
  
  • JPG files, which are the default file format used by digital cameras, are ideal for full-color images with more than 256 colors (including virtually all photographs).
  • GIF files are smaller, but only contain 256 colors, which can lead to discolorations.
  • PNG files support true color and are saved without any loss of information, but are much larger than either of the other two formats.
• For most resized pictures, including pictures for wikiHow, the best format will be JPG.

Warnings

• Scaled images will not be as high-resolution as the original; this can affect the quality of printed pictures. Therefore, if you would like to make full-sized prints, save scaled pictures separately and make prints from the original files.