Resizing Pictures

I consider myself a bit tech challenged so when I learn something new I like to pass it along. It is unusual for me to do two of these type posts so close together though!

I recently joined WeRelate to share some of my genealogy online. One of the features that I liked was the ability to share pictures. I ran into a glitch when I kept getting an error message that my images were too large. I tried the various programs that I have on my computer, all of which were free downloads and therefore lacking in features. I came up empty in an online search for information. Then I found something about how email programs resize pictures. I tried sending myself files as both attachments and as images and the image feature made them much smaller. (I used AIM mail) When viewed online you can't see any difference so I was set for WeRelate.

Today I was blog hopping and I came across this at Robin's Nesting Place and I had an "Oh, duh!" moment.

I posted on November 11, about my Picasa account. I had reached approximately 70% of my storage space in seven months and had duplicates of many pictures on Picasa. Annie in Austin, graciously looked at my blog to try to figure out my problem. She saw that my pictures were about 80% larger in pixels than those on her blog.

I am not as close to using up my 1g of free space at Picasa as Robin is but I have been concerned about having to pay for an account in the future. With three public and one private blog, all sharing the same Picasa account, I have to run out of space or start deleting pictures from older posts sooner or later. Her method of resizing pictures may work for you (and be sure to read the comments) so check out her post. I am not to the point where I plan to go back through all of my posts and change the pictures that I have already added but I will be smarter about uploading my pictures in the future.

After you email yourself the pictures that you want to post to resize them you have to save them again which is a real pain in the neck so decide what pictures you want to use before emailing them. To save them from your email, right click on a picture and chose "Save Image As." Make sure you insert a file name. I added "resized" to the end of the file names I chose so I can quickly tell which picture is which.

I will also be reusing pictures whenever possible. Sometimes I post the same picture on both a public blog and the private, family only blog. At Apple's Tree I use the same dividing bar over and over again and in the past I uploaded it for every post. The easiest way for me to reuse a picture is to go to the post where I used it before and go to edit post and then click on the Edit Html tab. Then I highlight and copy (Ctrl+C) the code for that picture and paste (Ctrl+V) it in the new post. This is much easier to do if you have multiple tabs or windows open. (I have had mixed results when using the url for the picture from Picasa but you may have better luck with that option than I have.)

I was a bit concerned that having pictures of different file sizes would make my slideshow look funny so I resized the first two pictures and included them. It made no difference in how they appear.

So does this really save enough space to be worthwhile? This first copy of the picture below takes up 785kb and the second one only 25kb!!!! I can't see any difference, can you?

If you have any other tips to make my free space at Picasa last longer please share them!