PICs . . .

Re: PICs . . .

Dan Donaldson

>Typical pictures from a camera are almost always going to be too big to post. They have to be 40K or less. In order to do that, you need some photo editing software. You want to picture to be about 550 to 600 pixels in width, then play with the compression to get it below 40K. There is some info in the FAQ that might help. If you just have a few, send them to me and I will fix them for you so you can post them.

easy solution, even I can do using "Paint"

bill tindall

>If you aren't ready to deal with photo editing program you can do what you need to do in Microsoft Paint. Here is how it works in Win 98, and it will be similar with what ever you have.

First hook up camera memory to computer. Then select these options in order from desk top screen: Start, programs, accessories, paint, file, open

At this point there will be a box with a choice of "file type". select "all". Now search around the file structure with the up and down arrows to find your picture, for example "removable drive" etc. Select the picture to work on with a mouse click and it will magically appear in screen, probably in huge format. At top of Paint screen select View and options to shrink, rotate, etc. will appear. Also on the bottom and right edge of picture will be a tiny dot. If you click on it, holding down clicker you can drag the border to crop the picture. I ony get these dots right and bottom. I have to use the Paint "rotate" to rotate the PIC to get the dots on the other sides for cropping. A 1 meg file will require about a 30% shrink and a bit of crop to fit Woodcentral.

I haven't found a way to know how big the messed with file is at this point. So I save it with a title like "my fabulous table shrunk" in my photo file. then I go to that file, right click to get properties and then look to see file size. If it is still too big do it over. Tedious but it works for me. Some day I will learn a photo edit but I'm too busy making chips right now.

PS daughter showed me how to do this

Easy solution? I can't even do using "Paint"

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native now in Jax Fl.

>I'm using Windows XP, and have been messing with it for almost trwo hours now with no success. Is there anybody who re-sizes pics using Paint in Windows XP that can explain it to me. Seems easy enough, but there must be one little thing that I'm missing---as usual. Me and Technology just never mix very well.

Todd O.

Don't know about paint, but... *LINK*

Dan Donaldson

>Here is a sorta tutorial using irfanview, which is a free photo editing program.


Resizing pictures.

My solution

Derek Cohen (in Perth Australia)

>I have several Windows photo manipulation programmes, such as Photoshop (which I do use), but when it comes to resizing a picture then I use Word (the word processor)! This is simply the easiest and best method for me.

Dan, please save this method somewhere because this is the third time I am repeating it.

1. Save the pictures to the computer. Crop them and/or re-colour them as you will.

2. Open a new Word page and import all the pictures into it.

3. Save the Word document as a HTML file (making sure you know where to find it, of course - it does not have to be saved to Word, per se). Keep this Word document open on the screen (minimise it if you wish).

4. Go to Windows Explorer and find the HTML document. You will notice that there is an associated file, and that this contains duplicate images of the pictures you imported into the Word document. One of the pair will be full size (in the examples below, the originals were 3.5 Mb each), the other will be minute (about 15 Kb). Keep this open.

5. Now return to your open (saved) HTLM document in Word. When you re-size the image in this document (by dragging the corners), you will re-size the smaller of the two images in Windows Explorer. So what you do is resize the HTML images and save the page.

6. Again return to the Windows Explorer file and refresh the screen (press F5). The new sizes of the smaller image will be shown. You can resize each image this way until you get close to the 40K mark, which is the limit for uploading to WC.

7. Finally, save the final image file with a name. Note that you will not be able to use the Word document to resize after a day (I am not sure why).

Below are two examples. Both began as 3.5Mb files and were resized this way to about 38 or 39 Kb. I bought a new camera (Canon Powershot A540) yesterday and these are the first two pictures from it, so don't expect fireworks!

I am experimenting with lever cap screws at present. Here are two I have made.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: PICs . . . *LINK*

Skip in Falls Church

>Hi Steve,

The program at the link below is the easiest one I've seen to use. Someone else on the board (I forget who) suggested it and it's really easy. You can enter the final file size and not have to worry about any intermediate steps.

Skip


JPEG resampler

be more specific

bill tindall

>did you get to Paint? If so where in Paint did you get stuck. The usual problem is one can find the picture file and that is becasue "all files" was not selected.

Re: camera Software .

barryvabeach

>Steve, what camera do you have? Canons, and I assume others, come with software ( Zoombrowser is the canon bundled software) that can be used to compress a picture - it may be labelled something like send images by email ( which compresses the picture).

Re: PICs . . .

Derek Cohen (in Perth Australia)

>Skip

Thanks for posting this. I have tried it out and it works well. One small problem is that it will only accept a directory (which may hold many files) and not a single file, per se. Of course, you could open a directory just for the one file...

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: PICs . . .

Skip in Falls Church

>Hi Derek,

That's close to what I did - I made one directory labeled WCUploads and dump any 40K sized photos for posting in it. That makes them easy to find - so far. It also leaves open the possibility of reusing the same photo in the future without resizing again should the need arise.

Skip

Detailed instructions for resizing with Paint

Hank Knight from SC

>There are lots of ways to resize photographs and programs that do it for you - one of which is available for free download from the Microsoft Home Page, but I can't tell you exactly how to find it. I downloaded it a year or two ago and have since lost the directions. You can probably find it if you look. But there is an easy way to do it with the software that you probably already have on your computer. If you have basic Microsoft software including, Windows XP, it comes with an accessory program called "Paint" you can use to resize your photos. This method works best with photos taken with the camera set to take "small/normal" or "basic" sized pictures rather than the "large/fine" mode. Large pictures require more "shrinking" and you end up with a poor quality image. Here's how to resize pictures you've downloaded from your camera to your computer:

Select the photo you want to resize from the "my pictures" file on your computer and right click on it. A drop down screen will open asking you what you want to do with the photo. Click on "Open with." Another screen will open with various software programs options; double click on "Paint." The photograph will open in the "Paint" program. If it is a large photo, you will only be able to see a portion of it; you have to scroll around to view the whole picture. This is how it looks to the recipient when you e-mail the large photo. The object is to get the size reduced so you can see the whole photo on the screen at one time.

Go up to the menu bar at the top of the screen and click on "Image." Select "Stretch/Skew" from the drop down menu and click on it. A drop down screen will appear the top section of which is labeled "Stretch" (don't mess with "Skew"). Stretch has two windows, each of which has the number "100" in it. This represents 100% of the current size of the image. Delete the number 100 in each window and replace it with some other smaller number; how small depends on how much you want to reduce the size of the image. For a very large image, you might want to enter 25% or even 10% in each window. Then click O.K. If the image size doesn't suit you, go up to the top tool bar, click on "Edit" and then on "Undo" to get back to the original, then pick another number and click O.K. A little trial and error will quickly teach you how much to reduce the image to get it to a reasonable size. You can right click on the image and select "Properties" from the drop down menu. Properties will tell you how large the image is in bits (or is it bytes?). I think your image needs to be 40 KB or less to post on Wood Central

This is important: When you get the image to size you want, don't close the window. If you do, the computer will ask you if you want to replace the original image. If you click "yes," you will replace the original large image with the reduced one and you will lose the original image. Instead, click on "File" at the top left of the screen, then on "Save As" to save the reduced image as a separate file. All you need to do is to change the file name and click on "save" to save it as a separate file. To change the file name, add something (a number or a letter) to the file name in the window on the "save as" screen. My photos are named with three letters "DSC" followed by a number which designates the number of the photo in the series saved on your computer. Others may begin with "IMG" (for "image") or some other designation followed by a number. I usually add a letter like "A" or the word "small" after the number. You could just add a number like "1" at the beginning of the number designation. Don't mess with the "JPG" designation; it tells the computer the file is a photograph. After changing the file name, click on "save" and the resized photo will be saved in your "My Photos" file as a separate photo with the new name. When you want to e-mail or post the photo, select this reduced image from your computer file and send away.

Good luck.

Hank

Re: be more specific

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native now in Jax Fl.

>Bill,

Yes, I had found Paint, got my desired picture in the Paint screen, but couldn't shrink it. I went to the "Help" toolbar, and it said to click and drag the "Handles" at the bottom of the picture, but I couldn't find them. Opened up one screen and it said that the Width of the picture was 2272 and the Width was 1704. Had I know what numbers to put into those boxes to shrink the picture I think I would of been good to go.

Later tonight I'll take a look at the other responces and see if I can work it out. I think Hank as broken down to my speed quite nicely. Thanks Hank for all the effort you put into all that typing, and also Thanks to everybody else who has responded, between the lot I should be able to get it now.

I can at least send pics but they come out HUGE, which is no good.

Thanks again to everybody so far, I really appreciate it.

Todd O.

Re: One Minor Correction to "Paint" Instructions

Hank Knight from SC

>Tod, in my instructions, I said you could right click on the picture to get a menu with "Properties" which would, in turn, tell you the size of your reduced image. That won't work in Paint - nothing happens when you right click on the image in paint. Go ahead and save the reduced image with a new name. Then right click on the new image - or on the thumbnail - in "My Photos." A screen will appear with information about the new reduced image, including the size. If you are not satisfied with the size, delete the new image from "My Photos" and start over with opening the original image in Paint, etc. etc.

Sorry about that. I thought I'd better try out my instructions to see if they worked. Glad I did; I found this glitch. All should work according to Hoyle now.

Good luck.

Hank

Re: be more specific

Derek Cohen (in Perth Australia)

>I can at least send pics but they come out HUGE, which is no good.

Todd

Before you upload a picture, first PREVIEW the post.

As Hank noted, if you Preview, then you must re-insert the link to the image.

Previewing your post will enable you to determine if you need to shrink it some more (or enlarge it, as the case may be).

Note: My "Word method" is essentially the same process, with Word replacing Paint. I suspect that the Word/Windows Explorer combination does give more immediate control over the re-sizing than Paint. Best of all is the "JPEG Resampler" programme. I will use this first from now on.

Regards from Perth

Derek