Often in the hobby, we want to add photos to a forum, blog, or Reef Tools :). Most hobbyist websites, will enforce some sort of a limit with regards to the file size they allow you to upload. Even in situations where there is no file size restriction, photos should be re-sized to accommodate most screen sizes (without distorting the website).

There are many pieces of software that allow you to perform such a task, but we thought we would start with one that is free, and comes with all PC’s, Paint (I hear the Mac contingency in the background, and I promise we’ll get to iPhoto soon). Resizing a photo with Paint is very simple, and should take no longer than a few seconds.

Step 1:Open Paint.

Step 2: Open your photo file. Click on File–>Open, and open your original photo file. You will see that the photo is quite large, 3024×2016 pixels in this case (which is why you can only see the top-left corner).

Step 3: Click Image–>Stretch/Skew (or control-w).

Step 4: Select a size. Paint does not allow you to choose width/height by number of pixels. Under the Stretch section, type in the same number for both horizontal and vertical %’s. You are starting with both at 100% and are telling the program how much smaller it should make the photo. In this case, we selected 20% and then clicked OK. You can, of course, select a different percentage. It is important to note that by default, Paint will show you the photo on the screen at 100%, so you can immediately tell if you made it too small (or not small enough). You can always click Edit–>Undo (control-Z), to undo your last step.

Step 5: Image is re-sized. You can see that the photo was re-sized to 20% of the original resolution (size).

Step 6: Save the Image. Click File–>Save As. We recommend that you save the image with a different name than the original, and therefore preserve the original file (in case you made a mistake). You can always just add the word “small” to the file name, and click Save.

You’re all set. You now have a file that is smaller and is ready to be uploaded. As you can see, it’s really simple and quick. Please let us know if you have any questions.