Click here for a visual guide to using the Image Resizer PowertoyWHY RESIZE?When creating documents and websites, the most problematic area that people encounter are the images! Not only are there the decisions over which images to use, but there is also a decision over what is the best size for display. The latter is even more important as more and more cameras are being produced which have extremely large resolution. Whereas 3MP (mega-pixel) cameras were the standard a few years ago, it is now not uncommon to find cameras with 10 or even 12MP resolution being sold. (The MegaPixel Calculator at this site will provide you with lots of data on file and printout sizes for various camera settings) These high resolution cameras are usually set to the highest resolution by default, meaning that the photos you take are extremely large, both in terms of physical size and memory storage. As an example, a photograph taken at 8MP when displayed on a computer monitor (typicaly set at a resolution of 72dpi - dots per inch), would require a monitor which is 4ft by 3ft to see the full size image! That image would also require over 22Mb of storage! Many people who use digital cameras to take pictures to include in documents usually download the images from the camera and insert them directly into their documents without resizing them. If you imagine a Word document which included just a few images, it's easy to see that the document could easily become a huge file to save. It would also take a long time to open for editing and even longer when sent to the printer! If you wanted to use such images on a website hosted at www.schools.ik.org, you couldn't! Schools IK will only let you upload a file which is less that 2MB in size! In fact, most online based website creation programs will limit your file upload size. Also, every school's computer drives are mapped to servers hosted at the Civic Centre and the storage space on them is taken up, in the main, by digital camera images which have not been resized. Therefore, it is important to reduce the size of your images to the size you would like them displayed, whether they are being shown on a website or inserted into a document. And this does not mean dragging the corner of an image to reduce its displayed size! Doing this only distorts the image and doesn't change its physical size! HOW TO RESIZEThere are many graphic editing programs whch provide a means of reducing an image's size. Even Microsoft Paint can do it, although the menu item to do this is called Stretch/Skew! Photoshop and PaintShop Pro are also programs which can resize images but they can be quite expensive. Free programs are available to carry out quite extensive image editing (Irfan View and The Gimp) including image resizing, but they can be rather confusing and bewildering to use! The easiest method of resizing images is to use the Image Resizer Powertoy from Microsoft (and is also on your school's M: drive). This is a free download from Microsoft and can be installed on every Windows XP based computer in your school (for those of you using PCs running Vista or Windows 7, you should use the Image Resizer Powertoy Clone). Once installed it adds an extra menu item, Resize Pictures, each time you click the right mouse button over an image stored on your computer. In the dialogue box that appears when you select Resize Pictures, select the Advanced tab at the bottom of the box and choose a Custom size of 250 pixels wide (don't worry about the height, the program will work this out). You will now have a copy of your orginal image which is suitable for inserting into your documents or uploading onto your website. You can also select multiple images and resize them all in one operation. Obviously, you will have a good idea as to what size you would like the image to be in your documents, in which case you could choose the Small size setting or create a Custom size of around 400 to 500 pixels wide. SHARPENINGWhen images are reduced in size, some detail will inevitably be lost. If you have access to some of the image editing programs mentioned above, look for a filter tool called Unsharp Mask! This filter will enhance the image and make it look a lot sharper. |