Resizing Photos for Monthly Contests (file size and pixels)

[Celebration]

Okay, I am no photo editing expert, and never did even enter the calendar contest because I did not want to figure out how to do the requirements. But I did pick up on an extrememly helpful post by Consareliars back in May, and now resizing pictures to get both the pixels AND the file size right is really, really easy. Before this post, I had to make my pictures really small to keep them under 200k.

I do notice that a lot of people are still having problems with both of the requirements--picture size, and file size.

Here it is.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=280&topic_id=55672#55718

"Reading through the latest postings here, it seems that at least part of the problem is that some who want to contribute to a contest aren't familiar with the sorts of editing processes that can be used to modify an image to fit the 800 pixel, 200KB size limits.

I haven't read the standard contest "Rules" (which I think are a good compromise) for a while, but earlier on the hosts often emphasized that others here would help those who weren't familiar with editing software modify their submissions to fit the guidelines. Emphasizing that offer to help, along with a collective effort to be more vigilant about noticing mistakes and helping entrants do the work needed to meet the rules and learn a bit about image editing.

And, as a general comment on image editing software, I noticed that GIMP has been mentioned as a good free alternative to many pricey programs, which it is. It is a very powerful program, and although I have heard the user interface is much improved in the more recent versions, any program with vast number of functions often is confusing to newer users. I would recommend the very highly recommended freeware image viewer Irfanview to beginners and anyone else who wants to do this task very simply.

That program offers much more, but resizing requires just one click on the "Image-resize/resample" menu and typing 800. And there's an "Undo" if one typed 80 or 880. Then it's simply a matter of choosing "Save for Web" and moving a slider to get the appropriate (under 200KB) size, or any other size wanted for any other purpose and putting the resulting file up on the web to make it accessible.

The main page is http://www.irfanview.com /

People will need to download the main Irfanview program and the Irfanview Plugins, install the main program and then the Plugins. The only downside is that is for Windows machines only."

[Cassandra]

1. Photobucket will do it for you...

I think it's the second choice, and now I just upload all the shots I put in photobucket to that size. Flickr seems to give a much smaller file size.

[Celebration]

2. That takes care of pixels only!!

My file sizes were in the 300 k range, though, even when my pictures were 800 pixels at the widest.

If there is a way to change the file size using Photobucket, I would like to know it.

However, some people will not need to change the file size. It depends on the camera (as I understand it).

For those who don't know how to read the file size, right click on the picture, and then look at "Properties"

I'm going to post two pictures here, with the same pixels but different file sizes. Now, guess which one conforms to the rules, and which doesn't?

[sandnsea]

3. In Photoshop, "save for the web"

You can adjust your kilobytes in there before you save. Also, you should set your resolution at 72 when you're working on image size. Most photo programs will allow you to adjust your kilobytes when you save.

However, when you upload to a server, it might change. It did for me, no clue why.