Resizing an image using Photoshop

Words and Photo by Will Smith

In this new world of shared digital photos on the web, not everyone recognises the speed limits of internet connections and fail to prepare their images correctly. Here at ePHOTOzine people regularly ignore our criteria for photo sizes and it's only thanks to an automatic-resizing program that all photos appear at a uniform size in the reader gallery.

There are several reasons you should re-size the photos yourself before submitting them to this site, or any other site for that matter:

• Speed - properly resized images will upload quickly and there is less chance of errors occurring.
• Quality - by resizing the photo yourself, you ensure the best possible quality.
• Cost - when a web-site has hundreds of thousands of users (like ePHOTOzine) you are costing them money each time you upload a big image.

The resizing process is very simple and below you will find a step-by-step instruction for some of the most popular Digital-imaging programs.

Choose the imaging program you use from the list below:
Adobe Photoshop Elements Photoshop
Jasc PaintShop Pro 7
Ulead PhotoImpact 8
Easy Thumbnails (free program!)

Adobe Photoshop Elements Photoshop

1. Load the large image into Elements or Photoshop that you want to re-size.

2. Click on Image > Resize > Image Size. Which will bring something similar to the window below up.

Make sure the Constrain Proportions box at the bottom is ticked. Then enter a number into the width box, on ePHOTOzine we allow images of no more than 600 pixels wide or 600 pixels high if it's a portrait style shot. (1000pixels for e2 Members ) Then click OK to resize the image.

3. Now you've resized the photo, you're half way there. However, this next stage can have a massive impact on the size of the end result photo. It takes quite a bit of care, but with some tweaking you can get the lowest possible file-size for your photo.

A recent addition to Photoshop is the save for web function, which is an excellent tool for this technique. You can find it in File > Save for web or ALT CTRL SHIFT S (Quite a handful!)

4. When you've got this open, the temptation is to click save and not worry about fine tuning. You can get away with this often, because the Save for web function usually does a good job on default settings. If you do this however, you're unlikely to get the lowest file size or the best quality, the key is to find a balance.

The majority of photos are going to be saved in JPEG format, so making sure this is selected, click on the arrow to the right in the Quality setting and use the slider that pops up.

Element Users Note: If you're in Photoshop Elements, you'll notice your Save for web window has less options than the one shown above. These aren't necessary for this technique so don't worry.

5. Although the quality difference is hard to appreciate, as the images have been resaved as JPGs, the three images below show the different statistics that will appear in the Save for web window as you change the JPEG Quality slider.

We save many of the photos on ePHOTOzine at around the 45 quality setting to make sure they load quickly.	If the quality is obviously suffering at any lower settings, this is about as high as you should go saving for the web.	Taking over half a minute to load, an image saved at this high quality setting is not really necessary for the web.

Choose the compression setting on the slider that has the best quality, with the smallest file-size.

We recommend no higher than 70k for 600pixel images or 200k for 1000pixel images, but we allow 100k for 600pixel images or 400k for 1000pixel images.

6. Then save your image and you're done!

Jasc PaintShop Pro 7
1. Load the large image into Paint Shop Pro.

2. Go to Image > Resize in the menu, or Shift S and enter 600 into the width box (or 600 pixels high if it's a portrait style shot). Set 1000pixels for e2 Members

3. Now you've resized the photo, you're half way there. However, this next stage can have a massive impact on the size of the end result photo. It takes quite a bit of care, but with some tweaking you can get the lowest possible file-size for your photo.

The best way to save the resized image is to use the JPG Optimiser which you can find in File > Export > JPEG Optimiser.

This allows you to quickly see the effect on file-sizes the differing compression ratios have. You can also change the format of the JPG image, from standard to progressive or see the time it will take the compressed image to download on a variety of modem speeds.

Choose the compression setting on the slider that has the best quality, with the smallest file-size. You should aim to have an image of around 70Kb, this is usually a good compromise between quality and file-size. On some images you can go even lower without seeing a drop in quality.

Now just save your image and you're done!

Ulead PhotoImpact 8
1. Load the large image into PhotoImpact 8 that you want to save for the web.

2. Click on Format > Image Size or press the CTRL G keys.

Make sure the Keep aspect ratio box at the bottom is ticked. Then enter a number into the width box, on ePHOTOzine we require an image of no more than 600 pixels wide or 600 pixels high if it's a portrait style shot. (1000pixels for e2 Members)

3. Now you've resized the photo, you're half way there. However, this next stage can have a massive impact on the size of the end result photo. It takes quite a bit of care, but with some tweaking you can get the lowest possible file-size for your photo.

The above screenshot shows the Ulead JPEG Optimiser available in PhotoImpact in File > Save For Web > Entire Image. This tool is very similar to those offered in Photoshop and PaintShop Pro. The first thing you should do when this has loaded up is tick the 1:1 option so that you can see the image as it will appear on screen rather than a smaller version.

Then making sure JPG is selected at the upper right of the window change the quality bar until you reach a small file size of around 70k. You might be able to go a lot lower than this, depending on how much detail is in the photo you are saving.

When you've found the best possible file size and image quality combination, just click Save As... and you're ready to upload your photo to the web!

Easy Thumbnails
If you don't own any software and don't want to buy anything just yet try Easy Thumbnails - a basic image resizing program that free to download and use.

1. Install Easy Thumbnails - you can download this free program from here www.fookes.com. The download takes a matter of seconds and loads an icon (with EzThmb_Setup.exe under it) on your desktop.

2. Click this icon to install the program, clicking ok at each stage, until the install stages are over. You will now have a shortcut blue and red icon on your desktop with Easy Thumbnails as a file name.

3. Click this to open the program. A palette appears with four tabs on the left: Files, Settings, About and News
We just need to go view two of these.

4. Click on the Files tab. Select your image's file type Jpeg or Tiff etc. Most digital cameras record in Jpeg as default. And then click on the folder where your images are stored in the palette's "Look In" window. If you've connected your camera or card reader select that icon.

5. Your files will appear as a list in the third window. Click the one you want to resize an image preview will appear on the right hand side.

6. Now go to the settings tab and set 600 pixels if you are regular ePHOTOzine (or 1000 pixels if you are e2) in both the max width and max height boxes. Select Shrink to fit in the Resize box. Leave the Algorithm, Prefix and New name fields.

7. Below you can adjust Brightness, Contrast, Sharpness and Rotate, but the key for ensuring the right size for upload is the JPEG quality slider.

8. On the right preview window select the Preview Output tab. Notice the blue bar at the top of the palette. It shows the new file name (the old file with tn_ in front), the image size and the file size. The image size is the pixel dimensions you set in the max height and width boxes. The file size is the KB figure that we need to get below 100KB for 600pixel images and 400KB for 1000pixel images. To do this drag the JPEG slider to the left from 100%. Try at 90% first. Check the figure in the blue box and slide left to make smaller or right to make bigger. When you get below the limit. Click Make and the thumbnail will be saved and ready to upload to ePHOTOzine.