Just started out and want to send photos by e-mail. upload it to websites etc.? Having a hard time getting the right size in kb or pixels?I hate it when someone sends me a photo by e-mail and I have to scroll a mile to left/right and up/down to try to figure out what it is, or it is so small it's impossible to figure out what the stamp is supposed to be.

I will try to show how to get just the right size and still keep the quakity without having to make gigasized photofiles. Try never to exceed 100 kb and 640x480 pixels. This is plenty to see the photo, and not a heavy download. Usually, getting the file a lot smaller is a good thing too, but it depends on the photo and the purpose, of course.

 I use Photoshop, and will use that as an excample. There are a lot of similar features on other editing software, so I think you will get the idea anyway.

Start by finishing your photo in a photo-editing program. Always do your editing in the large, original size. Just hold  the USM(UnSharpMask) until after you made the file smaller. Go to the menu. Find Image ->Image size... This box will appear: Set the size to Width: 640 Height: 480 you can see here that this changed the file from 9 Mb to 900kb. This is still way to big though. Next step is to give the photo its finishing USM(this is a whole other tutorial) In this particular photo I used: Amount:50 Radius:3 Threshold:10 And then, to give it the right size go to File ->Save for web...

   This window will appear:
(be sure you have the "optimized" page up)

Here you can tweak the quality and size of your photo and see what it does to it at the same time. Make it as small as you possibly can without loosing quality. I actually was able to make this about 16 kb without loosing too much quality. But, I ended up with quality 50 and a file of  23 kb. A lot better than 900 kb, right?

Here it is:

I hope this was helpful to you ;-)