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Let's begin ...

Open Adobe Photoshop.  To open the Jesse.jpg image, click on File, to Open on drop down menu.

 A new window will open. Look in: means "looking in the folder where your image is stored".  So browse to your Desktop where you should see your new folder called tutorial.  Click on it to "select it", then click on the Open button to open it.

You should see your Jesse.jpg inside your tutorial folder. If it's not there, assume you didn't put it in there, and go find it.

Click on Jesse.jpg (you can preview if this is the correct image by the thumbnail at the bottom of the Open window) to select it, then click the Open button to open it.

Now that your photo is open in Adobe, check its size and resolution.  To do this, click on Image on the menu bar, and down to Image Size on the drop down menu.

A window will open showing you the information you need to know.  This image has a resolution of 72 ppi (pixels per inch).  This is good.  If there is any other number in this box (300, 150, etc.) erase it, and type 72.  The width of the photo is 6 inches and the height is 4.5 inches.  If you prefer to work in pixels, that information is in the section at the top of this window, but I can visualize inches better than pixels.  The Image Size is indicated at the top under Pixel Dimensions -- 410 K.  Next step we're going to leave the 72 ppi resolution, but we're going to make the image 'physically smaller' by changing the 6 x 4.5.

This is where you change the physical size of the image.  In the diagram above, I changed it to 4 inches in width.  Because I have Constrain Proportions checked, the height automatically changed to 3 inches, keeping the image in proportion.  Notice the pixel dimensions changed from 410 K to 182 K.  Considerably smaller file size.

In the image we're using, there's some 'dead space' around Jesse.  If we eliminate (crop) that out, our image will be even smaller.  So let's crop.  To do this, on your Tool Bar, click  the Marquis Tool (as above) to select it.  When you're NOT cropping extraneous parts of the image out, you would simply save your image at this point.

Click on your open image, place your mouse cursor on the image where you want to start your crop (I started my crop top left corner, indicated by the red arrow), click your left mouse button and hold it down as you drag across your image till you've selected the portion you want to keep.  You'll see the 'marching ants' around the part that will be preserved (or kept).  Try it as many times as you like till you're happy with the portion you want to keep.

Now go to Image on your Menu bar, down to Crop.

  
This is the cropped photo, and if you check your new image size (Image / Image Size) you'll see the image is even smaller (3.111" x 2.681 inches OR 224 pixels x 193 pixels) and a manageable size for emailing.

Now let's save your newly resized image.  To do this, go to File on your Menu bar, down to Save As ... . The reason we are using Save As versus Save, is that if you simply 'Save' you will override your original image.  I always like to keep my original images in the event I want to print them or do something else with them, in which case, the larger image size is better.

After you have scrolled down to Save As, a new window will open.  Browse to your tutorial folder in order to save your reduced into that folder.  Type a new name for your image.  I just added a 2 after the word Jesse to indicate it's a revised image of the original Jesse. So my new image is called Jesse2.jpg.  Make sure your Format is set to JPEG.  Click Save.

Yet another window will open.  Slide the file bar to about Quality 8.  This will give you an image of 35.06 K.  MUCH better than the original image which was 173 K. Don't reduce the quality too much or your picture will look generally 'unclear'.  A 35 K image will take about 6 seconds to download to a computer using a 56.6 Kbps modem.  You can see the download time at the bottom of the window above.  Experiment by sliding the bar and watch the download times change along with the image size.  Click OK.

That's it!! We'Ve reduced our image from 173 K to 35 K.

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Index of Tutorials

BCC: Instructions for Outlook Express | BCC: Instructions for Eudora | BCC: Instructions for Netscape | Clean Forwarded EMails

Reducing Images in Adobe | Reducing Images in Irfanview

Tutorial by Somewhere in Time