Sometimes figuring out how to resize your pictures to look big, yet small in file size can be tough for people that don't mess a whole lot with digital images.

I have here a small tutorial on how to use Google's free Picasa 2 software to resize your images. Picasa can be downloaded for free from this site: http://www.picasa.com/

Install Picasa and allow it to scan your computer for pictures. Chances are it will find pictures that you have totally forgotten about.

When you are done with that Picasa will look like this:




On the left is where you can browse through all of the folders on your comptuer that have pictures on them:




When you get to this point, simply select your image by clicking on it, or you can drag one or more images to the lower left corner where it says Picture Tray:




Then click the Export button in the lower right corner:




A box will open up. Here you can specify the size and quality of your picture, as well as where the copy you are making for the site will be saved. Here I have browsed to my desktop, and named my folder export. This will make it easy to find again. Now under Image Size Options, Set Resize To 800 pixels. Now adjust the Image Quality to 30% and press OK:




Once you are done, you will have a folder on your desktop called export that will have the image that you just resized. It will look large, but it will be small in file size so it doesn't take up a lot of hard drive space. You can now attach this image in the discussion forum, or use it in the image gallery. Now Picasa can actually do a whole lot more than just this, if you want to get into all of the neat features that it has.

Hey that's pretty cool!
If you do not want to download anything on your computer you can also use Microsoft Paint.

Just copy and paste the pic into paint.

Go to the image drop-down menu and select Stretch/Skew.

In the Stretch fields, change the percentage to something like 50% in each(make sure they're the same percentage or your pic will get distorted).

If you put in 50% percent your picture will decrease in size by half. If that shrinks it too much or too little you can undo it and try a different percentage.

I think I might download that software resizer though. I just wanted to post an alternative!

Right now, our new gallery software resizes photos for you. All you have to do is upload them, and the software will do the rest for you.

I love this site

how can i scale down a pic for the avatar?

i am wondering the samw thing- tired to resize it no luck!

I haven't been able to figure that out yet either

I copied mine to microsoft photo editor, resized it smaller, saved it again and then posted it.

Emily,

I just saw the picture of Scout in the Hershey Kiss costume....that is just the cutest thing I've ever seen!!!!!

What size are y'all using for the avatar pics?
It says it has to be less than 10kb

I open mine in Microsoft Photo editor and seems I have to resize them to 10%, that's been the easiest way I've found.

I use 75x75 or 80x80 for my avatar

Hey thanks so much for posting this! I finally got my thumbnail in! I used the microsoft paint method.

ok let's see if it worked!!!

Back to the drawing board I guess!!!!