In the past Windows users have asked me how to resize the photographs they take with their digital camera. It wasn’t until recently, when I learned that the Paint program that comes with Windows has the ability to resize images, that I could provide a useful response,

If you send five or ten pictures to your Aunt Myrtle who uses a modem to connect to the internet and she tells you it takes several hours to download your e-mail, this is for you.

Windows Paint gives you two ways to resize the image: by percent or by dimension. I’ve found that 640×480 is a good size for photographs to post on the web or to e-mail to people, so if you change the dimensions to that, you’re done. I’m assuming your camera takes pictures at a standard resolution such as (800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024 etc.). If it doesn’t, the picture will look kind of funny because it won’t have the correct aspect ratio.

The other way to resize your image is to reduce the size by a percent. You can then see how big the new image is, and adjust accordingly. I try to keep my photos between 25KB to 75KB. Now for the instructions.

How to resize your photograph by exact dimensions

1. Right click on the image and select ‘Edit’. (This should bring up Windows Paint.)
2. On the menu bar at the top, select Image -> Attributes…
3. If the image is a portrait layout, use a width of 640 and a height of 480. If it’s a landscape layout, use a width of 480 and a height of 640.
4. Save the file (you may want to ‘Save As’ to a different file so you don’t overwrite the original.)

How to resize your photograph by percent

1. Right click on the image and select ‘Edit’. (This should bring up Windows Paint.)
2. On the menu bar at the top, select Image -> Stretch/Skew…
3. Change the percentages in the Stretch box for both Vertical and Horizontal. Make them both the same or else the picture will not be proportionate.
4. Save the file (you may want to ‘Save As’ to a different file so you don’t overwrite the original.)

It’s possible that the software you got with your digital camera will resize images, but I’ve found that some don’t, hence the need for an alternative. If you want something to do advanced photo editing, like reducing red-eye or airbrushing a blemish, you have lots of options. You can go with the rather expensive but extremely powerful Adobe Photoshop. I use The GIMP on Linux, and they have a version for Windows, but I don’t know how well it works. Google offers a free program called Picasa (version 2 was just released) that does a great job of organizing your pictures for slide shows, and it also has the ability to reduce red-eye. You can find loads of alternatives on Google.

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