How do I make photographs smaller for email?

The photographs I take with my digital camera and very large… huge! In the past, I have been sending these large images to friends over email but I am sure there would be a way to make these photographs smaller for email because a couple of people have complained. I really want my friends to see the wonderful shots I took during my vacation on the Andes. Is there a way I can reduce and decrease the images? I use a Canon EOS and have a Windows laptop. Any help will be highly appreciated.
Suzanne Pearl

There are tons of ways to cut the extra flab off digital camera photographs. In another article I provided detailed instructions on how to reduce image size using the free online Pixlr.com editor.

However, if you are on a Windows based computer and frequent locations where internet access would be slow or non-existent, you can employ Paint, the free image editor provided with the operating system, to make these digital camera photographs smaller for email.

Though it’s easy to email photographs from digital cameras, you should (ideally) reduce the size when sending them to friends and family. This has many benefits – saving time and internet bandwidth, sending many more photos with one email message, getting the photos to display without scrolling for recipients using email programs etc. In this article, I’ll show you how to use the free Microsoft Paint program to make the photographs smaller in less than a minute!

Use Paint to make photographs smaller – how to instructions

The detailed instructions are accompanied by screenshots. I have used the Paint program on my Windows 7 computer which is slightly different than the one on Windows Vista or Windows XP. However, for all purposes, the basic functionality is the same. By the way, you should first transfer images from your digital camera to your computer if you haven’t done so already.

1. Paint is listed under “Accessories”. When you start this program, a blank image will be displayed [Slides 1 and 2].
2. To open a photograph, select “Open” from main menu. (Click the small menu icon at the top-left) [Slide 3].
3. Browse to the folder in which the digital camera photograph resides. Double-click to open it or select and hit the “Open” button [Slide 4].
4. The photograph opens and as you can see it is huge… the entire thing doesn’t even fit on my screen [Slide 5].
5. To make this photograph smaller we shall use the resize function. You’ll find the button close to the top-left. Click on it [Slide 6].
6. A pop-up is displayed showing the image size in percentage points and pixels. To resize the image, we need to provide new values for the width or height [Slide 7].
7. Ensure “Maintain aspect ratio” has a check mark in front and the “Percentage” option is selected. Now enter a new value in the width field. The height will change automatically. When you gain experience, you can work with pixels values [Slide 8].
8. Hit “OK” to reduce the image size. The photograph immediately becomes smaller. FYI, I decreased the image to 30% of the original size [Slide 9].
9. It’s time to save the photograph. Select the “Save as” option from the main menu and choose the JPG format (recommended for photographs) [Slide 10].
10. Move to the folder, enter a file name and click the “Save” button [Slide 11].

Result: We resized a 1280×960 pixels image to one which is 384X288 pixels. This also made the file size of the photograph smaller from 271kb to 57kb – almost 80% reduction!

Those of you who want to know more on how to make images smaller for email and web, I suggest read the following:

• Decrease size of Gif images
• Optimize JPG photographs and images