How Do I Compress a Digital Image?

Updated on May 15, 2010
M.G. asks from Minneapolis, MN
6 answers

I want to email a digital photo I took, but the jpeg file needs to be compressed first (it's too large to send as is). I don't have Photoshop, or any other like program, wondering if there is another way to do this from my home PC???

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So What Happened?

Thanks for all the great advice - I'm so appreciative! I was able to successfully alter the image from my own PC. I tried it a couple of ways and had the most success with Microsoft Office Picture Manager and Picasa (which was easy to upload!).

More Answers

Smallavatar-fefd015f3e6a23a79637b7ec8e9ddaa6

L.A.

answers from Minneapolis on

Use Paint. It's probably under Accessories.

You probably can right click on your jpeg image and choose Open With > Paint.

Once you have it open in paint, you can select Image at the top control bar then Stretch and Skew. Change the Horiz and Vert to a smaller percentage and this will make your photo size (height and width) smaller and thus the file size (mgb) smaller. If you're taking a 10 mb picture, there is a LONG way you can go to send a photo as an email. I usually do 20% and they are plenty big for emails.

You can save it in another format but the quality may be degraded, or the format may not be smaller. You could also try saving it as a zip by right clicking and Send To > Compressed (zip) Folder, but this doesn't necessarily help much depending on the content of the photo.

I think there are other ways to compress them, but you'd need a program like Photoshop to do it. Make a copy and play around with the size. I'm pretty sure that will get you what you want. You can email me if you have a question.

1 mom found this helpful
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D.G.

answers from Los Angeles on

check out Picasa - it is a free digital photo organizer by Google. It gives you the ability to automatically resize photos for email, as well as a host of tools for red-eye fix, cropping, editing, etc. It is simple to use and a great program. You can also sign up for Picasa Web Albums (also free) so you can post your favorite photos online and share them with friends and family. Hope this helps!

1 mom found this helpful
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M.K.

answers from Chicago on

Hmmm...I don't know how to do this without using Photoshop. However, you could upload your full-sized photo to a site like Shutterfly and share the website link with everyone else.

Smallavatar-fefd015f3e6a23a79637b7ec8e9ddaa6

S.W.

answers from Iowa City on

You may not need to download any picture software. If you have Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) then your computer already has software that can do this. If you right click on the picture, you can choose Open with Microsoft Office Picture Manager. Then you can go to Edit Picture and Compress Picture. Good Luck!

Smallavatar-fefd015f3e6a23a79637b7ec8e9ddaa6

J.P.

answers from Dallas on

You can use a zip file, that will compress the photo without making any modifications to it.

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