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How can I shrink picture/photo size in Windows?

I took some photos with my digital camera and I want to e-mail them to friends or upload them to my Facebook, but the files are enormous, and uploading them takes forever! Can I make them smaller while still having the photos look the same?

Dave's Answer:

A typical digital camera takes pictures with a file size of about 3 megabytes. This can become inconvenient if you want to e-mail several pictures to a friend or upload a large number of pictures to a photo sharing site like Facebook. Fortunately, it is possible to shrink down the file size of the pictures without changing their appearance.

Confusingly, when you open one of these enormous picture files on Windows, it often opens in a program that shrinks the picture down to fit your screen, which is convenient, but conceals the fact of how large the picture really is.

When I open one of these 3 megabyte pictures in Windows, for example, by default it opens in a program called Windows Picture and Fax Viewer:

picture and fax viewer preview

In order to shrink down the file size of the picture, you need to open it in a different program called Paint. Right-click on the picture file, and on the right-click menu, pick "Open With >", and on the sub-menu, pick "Paint" (the list of programs that appears on your sub-menu will be different from the list below, but "Paint" should be listed):

open with paint

Whoa! When you open the photo in Paint, you may find that the picture is a lot larger than you thought it was. In Paint, my friend's sleeve takes up more space on the screen than was used to display the entire picture in Picture and Fax Viewer:

photo in paint

To shrink the picture down, go to the "Image" menu, and pick "Stretch/Skew...". The Stretch and Skew dialog appears:

stretch and skew dialog

The default values for "Height" and "Width" are both 100%. If you leave these defaults and click OK, then nothing will change (you've told Paint to leave the picture at 100% of its old height and width). Replace both "100"s with "25" to shrink down the picture to 25% of its old height and width -- this is about the right amount of resizing necessary to shrink a 3-megabyte photo down to the standard size that will fit comfortably on a screen -- and click OK. Voila, the picture now appears at a manageable size:

shrunk image in paint

Now go to the "File" menu and pick "Save As" to save a copy of the picture in its reduced form. (You'll probably want to save a copy, rather than overwriting the original file, in case you ever decide you still need the larger original.) If the original picture was about 3 megabytes, then the reduced photo size will be less than 100 kilobytes, a much more manageable size to e-mail to friends and upload to photo sharing sites.

Bennett Haselton is a political and technology blogger whose specialty is helping people unblock MySpace along with other blocked websites at school, work, and other places where Internet access is censored!


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Categorized: Facebook Help , Twitter, LinkedIn and Social Network Help , Windows PC Help   (Article 9125, Written by )
Tagged: facebook, microsoft paint, microsoft windows, windows picture and fax viewer
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Reader Comments To Date: 7

Dan said, on October 17, 2009 9:45 PM:

And here I thought Paint was only good for drawing mustaches on people and other assorted vandalism.

But seriously this is good information. And for a Mac there is a widget called Image Shackle that I like.

mbali said, on November 5, 2009 5:53 AM:

just wanted to say that i have followed the instrictions and i was fully help want to say good site i am very inprested
thank you

Robert Dozier said, on November 13, 2009 8:30 PM:

If all this is confusing, then download a free simple photo editor viewer, 'Fast stone' . Simple easy to use. Click on re size and choose the best size for your project. Then you can keep or discard the original. I use Photoshop for some of my more complex editing but for quick on the fly editing (size,brightness,contrast etc) 'Fast stone" lives up to it's name 'fast' also it's very intuitive.

WAYNE said, on September 6, 2010 8:14 AM:

if i want to reduce the size of lets say 50 photos. Is there any way I can do them all together at the same time? Or do you need to open each one up seperate and do them individually?

thanks

wayne lindner said, on May 29, 2011 8:12 PM:

Here is a squidoo lens with several very easy picture shrinking methods explained.
http://www.squidoo.com/stats/traffic/Shrink_A_Picture

Vincent said, on October 12, 2011 5:46 PM:

thanks! this helped me out a lot!

Dave said, on January 25, 2012 9:04 PM:

Followed your advice on how to shrink pictures in Windows Fax and Picture Viewer ... works great BUT is there any way to shrink an entire file of pictures ... 200 +, all at one time instead of one by one ?

Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











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