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Resizing Photos For Posting On
Forum Using Paint Shop Pro by Cher

FIG. 1: After downloading the image from my camera, I open it up in Paint Shop Pro (PSP). Here's a picture of Opt. EverPraise. Straight off my camera it's 1600 x 1200 pixels and 5.4 megabytes in size. Yes, that 5.4 million bytes ... way beyond Kb so we need to do some serious resizing here.
FIG 2: Your image information shows in the lower right corner.

Always make a copy of your image and work on that. Just in case you mess up, you'll have the original so you can start over.
FIG. 3: To crop or not to crop? Use the selection tool, the square to decide which area you want to crop the picture too. Once you've decided in your selection, click on image, then crop to selection. (Circled in Fig. 4, area is grayed out as there was nothing selected.)
FYI: The Lasso is the freehand selection tool, this is used if you wanted to select an irregular area, like if you want to crop out something in the background.

Next step ... Resize your image.


FIG 4: In the upper left corner, click on Image, then Resize.

FIG 5: Since I've decided not to crop the picture, I have to decide what size I want to resize it to. This is the box that comes up for resizing. Type in the width you want the picture to be. I use pixels as I am used to using them but you can click on Actual / Print Size and use inches. For posting pics in the forum, keep them down to under 400 pixels or 4 inches wide. Be sure that Smart Size is showing in the drop down box and check the two boxes underneath. For this tutorial, I'm resizing mine down to 300 pixels wide which results in a height of 225.

To Sharpen or Not To Sharpen.
Sharpening an image is great if you're trying to bring out the sparkle in an upclose pic of a blossom but don't sharpen too much. Always keep in mind that the more you sharpen, the larger the file size will be.

Until you learn, I suggest you save it unsharpened first then play around with the sharpening and save it under a different name. This way you can compare the images.

FIG 6: If you just hit save, you have NO CONTROL over the size of the image. The best way to do this is to export the image.

Export works both for jpeg and gif images. It's very worthwhile to learn to use it. Click on File, Export, JPEG File.

You can also use "Save As". When the "save as" box opens there's an "Options" button which allows you to select a number for the compression to save it at, but unlike using export, you don't get a preview of the file size.

FIG 7:
This is where you can raise or lower the value of compression which in turn raises or lowers the file size in Kb.

You can use the slider (see white arrow) by clicking on the larger arrow on the right side of the box. If you prefer, the two smaller arrows allow you to adjust the value one number at a time or use the Wizard.

Watch the area circle, this shows you the size of the file you are creating. The higher the value, the smaller the file size will be. Select a compression that sets your file size aroung 40,000. At this setting, you shouldn't have any problem if you store your images on Picturetrail.

My finished image. 300 x 225 pixels, plenty large enough to have a very nice photo to show in a post and even with sharpening it one time, the file size was a respectable 31,182 bytes (31.2Kb).