Resize photos for better onscreen viewing

Large files can take up too much space on your computer and make it difficult to e-mail or upload photos to the Web. This 10MB photo may be difficult for some people to open or view.

Photo files from today’s high-megapixel digital cameras are very large, and it’s important to resize them before sharing via e-mail or posting them online.

For example, if you take a full-quality photo with a 10-megapixel camera and then send it to a friend without resizing it first, the recipient won’t be able to view the entire photo without scrolling.

Or, if the photo file is too large, they won’t be able to open the e-mail. That’s if the message even makes it to the recipient’s e-mail inbox—most e-mail providers such as Yahoo! or Gmail often have image attachment limits of 10-20MB (megabytes) per e-mail.

A 640 x 480 photo (the standard “small” pixel size option for resizing in many photo-editing programs) will fit nicely on an e-mail page.

Some resolution guidelines to follow:

• Lower-resolution photos are ideal for e-mailing and onscreen viewing.
• Keep in mind that there are file size limitations with some e-mail accounts. Try to keep your e-mail attachments less than two megabytes—that’s large enough to send several smaller-sized photos or a single medium-to-large image for printing.
• You can send a medium-to-large photo file via e-mail if the recipient wants to print a good-quality photo print or use the image as desktop wallpaper.

To resize your photos, select Resize from the file menu—or select your photo and right click with your mouse.

When you select your photo size, you can choose from smaller (640 x 480), small (800 x 600), medium (1024 x 768) and large (1280 x 1024) sizes.

Fortunately, it’s easy to resize digital images once they’ve been downloaded to a computer.

Here’s how you can resize your photos using free Windows Live Photo Gallery photo software:

1. Select the photo(s) you want to resize, and then, on the File menu, click Resize.
2. In the Resize dialog box, select the size you want to make the photo.
3. Click Resize and Save. The program will save the resized file in the same location as the original, and will add the dimensions to the file name of the smaller copy. For example, if the original photo is named "Yellowstone" and is saved in your Pictures folder, the resized photo is named "Yellowstone (1024x683)" and is also in the Pictures folder.

If you’re posting photos on a Web page, consider how many photos will be displayed on the page before resizing.

Many photo sharing and social networking sites have photo size restrictions, so you’ll have to resize your larger images before uploading.

Every photo takes up available screen pixels, so the more photos there are on a page, the smaller each needs to be in order to fit.

Photos also require time to download, so web pages load more slowly when there are multiple images (and more pixels). Do site visitors a favor and keep images relatively small to save time.

If you size your image to 800 x 600 pixels, for example, this will give you an easy-to-view photo for your blog or website, while also keeping the file size down. Plus, you can put several photos of this size on one page without slowing the page download time.

On several photo sharing website, blog, or social networking site, there may be image file size limits—another reason to resize your photos before you share. Other sites, like Snapfish, have uploading tools that will resize images for you.

To size images just right for the web, use Windows Live Photo Gallery and follow the same steps listed in the previous section.

The HP Photosmart 7520 e-All-in-One is perfect for families that want to share a wireless e-All-in-One that can print lab-quality photos from Snapfish—all for $199.¹

A great alternative for sharing and printing high-resolution photos that would be too large to e-mail is to share your photos online with Snapfish.

Just upload your photos to Snapfish and choose who you’d like to view them. Snapfish sends an e-mail message to them allowing them to view your photos. It also offers an easy way for your friends to order photo prints.

Now you can upload photos to your Snapfish account without a PC!¹ Upload, download, and print Snapfish photos at home using the HP Photosmart 7520 e-All-in-One or the HP Photosmart 6520 e-All-in-One —no PC needed.¹

Find out more about printing from Snapfish at home—PC free.