Tech Talk

Dear Tech Talk,

I'm wondering about sending pictures through email. I like to take pictures of the grandkids and send them to my friends but a lot of people complain that they're too big and ask me to scan them in smaller or make them smaller when I take them off the camera. Can you help me? Do you know anything about picture size?

Margaret

There are three factors to take into consideration when determining the size of a picture. First are the pixel dimensions of the photo. These vary, depending on the camera used or how the photo was scanned into the computer. The larger the dimensions, the larger the file size. Today’s digital cameras are rated using megapixel measurements. A normal 3-megapixel camera takes a fairly large photo, and it should be scaled down before sending it through the email. A good size for a picture would be 640x480 or less. This is still quite large for viewing on monitor. If you plan on printing the picture, you're better off leaving the size larger, as you will get better quality.

The second factor for determining the size of a photo is the photo's resolution. This is measured in dpi, or dots per inch. A 640x480 picture at 72 dpi will be a lot smaller than a 640x480 picture at 300 dpi. Most digital cameras today take pictures at 72 dpi, and just increase the dimensions of the photo. If you are scanning a photo, you can increase the resolution or dpi and keep the dimensions the same.

Almost any image editing program will allow you to change the dimensions and resolution of your picture, and then save them in a suitable format. This is the third factor in determining how large the file size of your picture will be. There are several popular formats for saving pictures, some of them lose quality and shrink the size of the picture, while others keep the quality, and make a larger file size. I won't go into detail about what all of the formats are and what they do, that's a lesson for another day. The best format for making small file sizes and still keeping the picture quality decent is jpg or jpeg. When saving in this format, you will usually find the option for amount of compression or quality. A setting of 100 will give you the best quality, but largest file size, while a setting of 0 gives the worst quality, but smallest size. Try different settings and see which one works best with your picture to keep it looking nice, while at the same time reducing the size.

Hope this helped,
Tech Talk

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