TheBlackNite
April 12th, 09:57 AM
Please note: This tutorial is provided from the pashnit.com forums see the link Pashnit Motorcycle Fourms (http://www.pashnit.com/forum/)
To prepare for this tutorial, you will need to download and install a free tool called “PIXresizer”. Click here (http://bluefive.pair.com/PIXresizer.zip) to initiate the download of the free tool. When prompted, choose the “Save” option to save the installation file to your computer.
Find the installation file you downloaded and open it by double-clicking it. (Windows XP will open this “zip” archive in a folder. Earlier version of Windows will require that you have a tool like WinZip to open this zip file.)
Inside the zip archive is a file called “setup.exe”. You can start the installation by double-clicking on this file, or you can move the file out of the zip archive (on to your Windows Desktop, for example) and double-click the file from the location where you saved it.
Click Next as prompted, remembering to check the “I agree…” radio button on the second installation screen, to install the program.
To check that the installation was successful, open the Start menu and open the program from the Programs…PIXresizer menu. The program should open to the main screen, where we'll head next..
When you open the program you see a screen that looks like this:
9
To begin, click on the Load Picture button. This will bring up a standard window you can use to navigate to where your pictures are stored.
Since we will be checking our results to see how many Kb they are, change the view of the Open window so you can see the file details. To do this, click on the icon in the top right as shown blow, and select Details from the list. Note how the Size of my pictures, in Kb, is now displayed.
11
Now, find a picture you want to resize, and open it.
Note how the screen has changed once I've opened my sample picture called "large_landscape.jpg".
10
This is my image size in pixels. It's a big photo, and you can tell it's a landscape photo because the first number is larger than the second.
This is the size of the image on my hard drive, shown here in Bytes. We won't worry about the original image size right now.
In this section are some quick options you can use to scale the image down to 75% or 50%... of the size of the original. The picture will still look the same, it will just appear as 75% or 50% as large as the original, on your monitor. Scaling works proportionally, dropping both the width and height in pixels in proportion to the original.
This is what we want to use to size a picture to the 800 pixel width recommendation for the forums. In my case, my pictures, when scaled in proportion, size to 800x533, not 800x600. The Maintain Aspect Ratio box is the key to scaling your pictures without squishing them out of proportion, so make sure this box is always checked.
The JPEG button is enabled by default. Clicking this will allow us to change the compression setting so we can save the file at an optimal size in Kb.Now, let's take a look at that JPEG button. When you move your mouse over the words Joint Photographic Experts Group, they'll turn blue. Click in that space to open the compression settings window. You'll see a window like this:
12
This is where you move the slider left or right to choose the jpg compression you think will work to make an image that is less than 195Kb.
Try setting the slider to 90. Remember that on a scale of 1-100, 90 will produce the highest quality image and use very little compression. Ideally, this is the combination we want to use to produce the best picture under 195Kb. We'll check the file size in a moment.
Now, click the Save Picture button. The usual window will pop up to ask you where you want to save the picture.
14
Note how the program has put in a new name for the picture: "large_landscape (800x533).jpg". This is important. If you want to preserve the original image, you should not replace it when you are saving here. For instance, if you plan to print the picture later, you want to keep that high quality file to print from and save a copy in the smaller size.
After saving you'll see a brief message pop up and then you'll be back on the program screen. Now let's see what's changed.
Click the Load Picture button again. Our normal window will open, but now it will show the new copy that we just saved. Since we set the window to show the file Details we can look at how big in Kb the new file is.
13
The new file is ready to attach to a post on the forums.
To prepare for this tutorial, you will need to download and install a free tool called “PIXresizer”. Click here (http://bluefive.pair.com/PIXresizer.zip) to initiate the download of the free tool. When prompted, choose the “Save” option to save the installation file to your computer.
Find the installation file you downloaded and open it by double-clicking it. (Windows XP will open this “zip” archive in a folder. Earlier version of Windows will require that you have a tool like WinZip to open this zip file.)
Inside the zip archive is a file called “setup.exe”. You can start the installation by double-clicking on this file, or you can move the file out of the zip archive (on to your Windows Desktop, for example) and double-click the file from the location where you saved it.
Click Next as prompted, remembering to check the “I agree…” radio button on the second installation screen, to install the program.
To check that the installation was successful, open the Start menu and open the program from the Programs…PIXresizer menu. The program should open to the main screen, where we'll head next..
When you open the program you see a screen that looks like this:
9
To begin, click on the Load Picture button. This will bring up a standard window you can use to navigate to where your pictures are stored.
Since we will be checking our results to see how many Kb they are, change the view of the Open window so you can see the file details. To do this, click on the icon in the top right as shown blow, and select Details from the list. Note how the Size of my pictures, in Kb, is now displayed.
11
Now, find a picture you want to resize, and open it.
Note how the screen has changed once I've opened my sample picture called "large_landscape.jpg".
10
This is my image size in pixels. It's a big photo, and you can tell it's a landscape photo because the first number is larger than the second.
This is the size of the image on my hard drive, shown here in Bytes. We won't worry about the original image size right now.
In this section are some quick options you can use to scale the image down to 75% or 50%... of the size of the original. The picture will still look the same, it will just appear as 75% or 50% as large as the original, on your monitor. Scaling works proportionally, dropping both the width and height in pixels in proportion to the original.
This is what we want to use to size a picture to the 800 pixel width recommendation for the forums. In my case, my pictures, when scaled in proportion, size to 800x533, not 800x600. The Maintain Aspect Ratio box is the key to scaling your pictures without squishing them out of proportion, so make sure this box is always checked.
The JPEG button is enabled by default. Clicking this will allow us to change the compression setting so we can save the file at an optimal size in Kb.Now, let's take a look at that JPEG button. When you move your mouse over the words Joint Photographic Experts Group, they'll turn blue. Click in that space to open the compression settings window. You'll see a window like this:
12
This is where you move the slider left or right to choose the jpg compression you think will work to make an image that is less than 195Kb.
Try setting the slider to 90. Remember that on a scale of 1-100, 90 will produce the highest quality image and use very little compression. Ideally, this is the combination we want to use to produce the best picture under 195Kb. We'll check the file size in a moment.
Now, click the Save Picture button. The usual window will pop up to ask you where you want to save the picture.
14
Note how the program has put in a new name for the picture: "large_landscape (800x533).jpg". This is important. If you want to preserve the original image, you should not replace it when you are saving here. For instance, if you plan to print the picture later, you want to keep that high quality file to print from and save a copy in the smaller size.
After saving you'll see a brief message pop up and then you'll be back on the program screen. Now let's see what's changed.
Click the Load Picture button again. Our normal window will open, but now it will show the new copy that we just saved. Since we set the window to show the file Details we can look at how big in Kb the new file is.
13
The new file is ready to attach to a post on the forums.