Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook

I have been visiting some local blogs recently, and was a little surprised to discover that some folks on computers are using an impractical method for resizing images (emailing them to themselves, using the email program’s automatic resizing feature). Using email to resize photos is easy, and I used to do it myself when I first started computing (9 years ago now!) but it is wasteful of resources and wasteful of ISP bandwidth. Not to mention very inconvenient.

What surprised me most of all is running into so many computer users who still do this and are not aware of the basics of photo alteration. I can understand this with the older generation (computing can be confusing even for younger folks) but especially for people who lead extremely busy lives and do not have the resources or time to discover new and improved methods. Yet staying in touch with their friends and family via email and photos is probably the most important use for their computer. They just aren’t aware of anything better. That is why I am here!

So I will no longer assume that the average computer user knows about (what are to me) “basic” programs and “basic” usage. I am here for the average/below-average computer user. Let’s start.

There exists this handy little photo editing program called Irfanview. It’s free. Irfanview can work with just about any photo file you have (.jpeg, .gif, .bmap, .ico, .tiff, etc). Go to the site and look for the download link. Once you have Irfanview all downloaded, start the program.

Once you have it open, go to the Menu where it says “File” (you know, File, Edit, Image, Options, etc). Click that, and a dropdown menu appears. Choose “Open.”

A new window will pop up, asking you what you want to open. Find the picture you want (let’s pretend you have a photo of a white house on the Desktop). You’d go to the Desktop until you see whitehouse.jpg. Choose that one. The photo should open in Irfanview.

Here’s our whitehouse.jpg photo. See how large it is? I have to scroll horizontally and vertically to see the entire image. This is too large a photo to email or post on a blog!

Now, go to where it says “Image” in the menu bar. A menu will drop down. Choose “Resize/Resample.”

A new window will pop up, asking you what size you want. For now, since you are new, you can choose something easy like “Half.” Obviously, this will make your picture twice as small. (In this example I opted for the “Set new size” and typed in width 500 pixels and height 375 pixels).

Click “OK.” The picture will immediately change. See below for our newly-sized photo.

Now you need to save the newly sized picture. If you want to make your photo of whitehouse.jpg permanently this small, choose “Save.” HOWEVER if you want to keep that larger picture of the white house for your own files, but want a smaller version in your email or uploaded on the web, choose “Save As” and rename the photo (for example, “whitehousesmall”). This will give you two photos of the white house in your computer– your original large photo and a new smaller photo.

Irfanview by default saves the images as jpegs. As you become a more advanced user, you can tinker with settings and make all sorts of files.

You can even use Irfanview to sharpen the image, remove red-eye, tint the colors, and do all sorts of nifty things. Explore with the menu items. Be sure to work on a “scrap” image and not one you want to preserve, in case you make a mistake.

Smaller images are much better for sending email. They also won’t annoy the email recipient, who hates getting gargantuan images! Smaller images are easier to upload. If you have a blog, this is very important. Some blogs I visit have enormous images in them, and my browser stutters and skips to display them. It is thrifty and courteous to compress your images. Use Irfanview, it’s free!