So you have an image to put online — Now what?
It’s amazing how easy it is to take a photo nowadays compared to the past – think about it; before, there were the really clunky cameras, then Polaroids with really expensive film… Eventually digital cameras came to become really popular, and in recent years it is completely acceptable to take photos with only your smart phone.
With the ease of taking photos, came the ease of uploading them to the internet as well – although in certain cases, you can encounter issues. By default, in order to have the best printing quality for your photos (Yes, photo departments in stores have even adjusted to the times by allowing you to upload directly from your phone!) your photos end up being… well, too large. 8,000 pixels wide by 10,000 pixels high, or something along those lines. Likely 10+ MB file size, too. One or two of these might be fine, but after so many whether uploading them to your personal WordPress site, or even attempting to send them in email, you’ll come to find that it’s way too much.
So, what can you do?
We’re assuming that you don’t have Photoshop, or some fancy photo editing software on hand – or as a possibility, you’re just not home on the computer that does have that software. Here’s where one of my favorite sites come in:
picresize.com
The website is very straight forward, immediately giving you the option to upload the image that needs to be edited – or if you aren’t sold yet, choose from one of their three pre-installed images to test out. Otherwise, either browse your computer for the image, or if it was grabbed from the web, paste in the URL that links to it.
You’re given more options and flair than you actually need, but some are useful especially if you have uploaded a photo to your computer from your phone. Use the rotate menu to change the orientation of your image – whether flipping it horizontally or vertically, or just turning it clockwise/counterclockwise.
As a great feature, you’ll be able to see a preview of all the edits that you have made, too.
Now to the bread and butter of our dilemma — your image being the wrong file size or dimensions.
Just a bit lower on the page, you’ll come across the section Resize Your Picture. Here, you can choose to shrink it down by pre-set percentages, or just choose a custom size. If you go for a custom size, it’s advisable that you only enter the max width that you need: this way the site automatically calculates the ratio needed to keep the image at the same proportions.
Even more convenient, is that off to the right you’ll see the original dimensions of your image, in comparison to the new size.
See how adding in only the new width of 500 automatically calculated the height!
Finally, you’ll come down to the Save As section, which is just as important as when you resize your image. Even if you shrink down your image, it doesn’t always mean that the file size will be at an optimal size. This doesn’t get it to its lowest point without losing quality, but it’s a start on the right path.
Make sure that the image format is either JPG or PNG, with the Quality being better — more often than not, the default is just fine. When you’re done, click the shiny I’m Done, Resize My Picture! button. Here, you’ll be able to download the new version of your image, ready to upload to your site or email!
Bonus Round:
Still need to get your image file size smaller, without risking loss of quality? Pop your image into the site https://compressor.io/compress and download the resulting file. More often than not, this site can shrink your file size down by another 50 – 80%, without a difference in appearance!
