Aged Cyber Aunt
How to: Digital Pictures and E-mail
Many people have digital cameras, and or scanners. We all want
to share the pictures they produce with our friends and relatives.
But there is a problem with their size if not reduced before
inclusion on the Internet. Even my venerable 1998 Nikon 900S takes
as its 'normal' picture one that creates an image file at about
250Kb even in JPG format.
If both the email sender and recipient have Broadband there is no
problem in sending or receiving files of more than a megabyte.
However mostly senders and recipients have a dialup connection
using a 56K modem. This means that transmission of large files
takes a very long time and is therefore quite expensive to run
particularly in the UK where the dreaded Subscriber Timed Dialing,
STD applies.
Most people only look at pictures on their monitors so a resolution
of 640 x 480 is ample and more importantly, the file size will be
under 100Kb using JPG format once it has been compressed. However,
if you want to print a picture to A4 size, ask the sender to
transmit the original even if it is a TIFF or GIF type file.
Because of the problem of big graphics files on the Internet, being
able to compress them is a useful skill to know about.
The purpose of this article is to tell you how to reduce the
resolution of large images by conversion to JPG file format using a
few different Windows programs and therefore making them more
suitable for sending by E-mail.
All the programs described have a number of facilities including
presenting a group of pictures as a slide show, as well as the
choice of cropping the image to show the parts you actually want to
be seen. Better to do the cropping before you resize.
Purists will convert the picture to TIF format which is less
'lossy' than JPG before doing the cropping. I do not propose to go
into either the details or reasons for this approach here because
this article is aimed at the novice.
When you have managed to reduce your image file to a suitable size
by compressing to the JPG format, attach it to your email in the
usual way. However, it is most important to save the reduced size
file with a different name, otherwise you will lose the original.
The reason for this is the JPG format achieves compression by
discarding large amounts of data in the original image, which once
gone cannot be recovered. Evidently such a loss may not matter if
you have made a backup before you started to play around with your
original. Bear in mind that most photographs cannot easily be
replicated if you lose the original so take care and think before
compressing. And of course, You Do Back Up don't you?!? Now to the
programmes used for this necessary conversion job.
Irfanview v. 3.80
This is a free image viewing program easily found on the Internet.
Select the picture you want to send and click on its file to show
it as a large picture. To reduce size left click on 'Image',
'Resize / Resample' and up pops a window: choose the '640 x 480'
size on the right side of the window. The picture will then shrink
in the window. Left click 'File', 'Save As' and rename the picture,
saving as a .jpg file. I usually add an 'a' to the filename, ie a
picture called Sam.jpg will be saved as Sama.jpg or Sam-a.jpg to
differentiate it from the original.
Reducing even a 1.5Mb file to a 640 x 480 .jpg file takes up less
than 100Kb and still displays well.
ACDSee
Versions 3 and 4 are often found on disks distributed with PC
magazines. The latest version is 6.02. This information is for
Version 4, however they are all fairly similar. Find the thumbnail
you want to send and double click on it to make the display larger.
Crop if required. Left click 'Tools', 'Resize' and choose 'Reduce
to' '640 x 480' and keep 'Preserve original aspect ratio' checked.
Left click 'File', 'Save As' and rename the picture, saving as
a.jpg file. I usually add an 'a' to the filename, ie a picture
called Sam.jpg will be saved as Sama.jpg or Sam-a.jpg to
differentiate it from the original.
Paintshop Pro
Versions 4 and 5 are often found on disks distributed with PC
magazines. This information is for Version 8, however they are all
fairly similar. Find the file by either: 1. Left click 'File',
'Open' and open the picture you want or 2. Left click 'File',
'Browse' and go to the folder where the picture is, open the
picture. Go to 'Image', 'Resize', choose 640 x 480, and check 'Lock
Aspect Ratio', click OK. Left click 'File', 'Save As' and rename
the picture, saving as a.jpg file. I usually add an 'a' to the
filename, ie a picture called Sam.jpg will be saved as Sama.jpg or
Sam-a.jpg to differentiate it from the original.
I use Windows operating systems 98, 98SE and 98ME. If you use
Windows XP I think it incorporates a picture editor. Use the above
instructions to search amongst the drop down menus at the top of
the screen until you find 'Resize' and find the 640 x 480 options.
'Save As' using a new filename.
Micrographics Picture Publisher
Although not as powerful as the Numero Uno of Graphics and
Photographic packages, Photoshop 8 or its cut down version,
Photoshop Elements, it performs pretty well and has been used in
commercial situations. It completes most tasks thrown at it and its
mode of compression is particularly simple. All you have to do is
open the file to be compressed, whether it be TIFF, GIF or
whatever, and then resave it as a JPG. This is all done via the two
menus that pop up with Open and Save As. When saving, the programme
opens another menu which allows you to view two images side by
side: the original and the compressed version. A slider is provided
to set the level of compression and there is a meter that reads out
the file size achieved. This allows you to select an image size
that will transmit fast over a dial up modem connection.
It is also very useful where one wants to embed images in a Word
text file because Word gets very stroppy with images much above
250k per page. Incidentally, Micrographics V8 was a "give away"
with PC Plus magazine a couple of years ago and it is certainly
well worth looking for. It may even be possible to obtain it from
their web site in the UK.
Updated 29 March 2004