Need Help With Picture Sizes

[terri232]

I use a Sony DSC-210 with my pictures set to 7M. I have been using this for many years and use PSP 2018 to edit them and save to my pc to use on eBay. They have a specific size that you need to use to upload pictures with them so that has to be 1600 pixels on the long side. Perhaps the upgrade to 2018 has a different setting which I am not familiar with.
Somehow or other, a setting must have changed because now when I do the same exercise, my pictures are 5.79 MB - I want them to be KB and need to know what I have to do in PSP to change this.
Hope I explained it properly - need help desperately.
Thank you

[hartpaul]

Are you saving as a jpg or is it saving as a tif or Bmp?
If you are getting them to the correct dimensions - longest side <= 1600 pixels then the other thing to reduce the disc size is to change the compression when you save the image as a jpeg .
Use Save As and in the Save As dialog box, near the bottom change the compression to 10 or 20 . You will be able to see underneath the file size created by that compression.

[terri232]

Yes - I am using jpg and will try your suggestion and let you know.
Many thanks -

[terri232]

Well, I tried your suggestions but that did not help at all. Any other ideas?

[JoeB]

Well, I tried your suggestions but that did not help at all. Any other ideas?

Then you did something wrong.

I just opened an image in PSP 2018 that was 8.7mb in file size and measured 5312 x 2988 pixels. I opened the Resize dialogue and selected the Based on One Side tab. I have Advanced Settings checked and Resample using... checked. I typed 1600 in the long side box and clicked OK. The image was now resized to 1600 x 900 pixels.

Then I opened the Save As dialogue with .jpg selected as the Save As type. Then I clicked the Options button on the bottom right of the dialogue. In the new dialogue that opened I clicked the Run Optimizer button on the bottom right. In that dialogue, in the Set Compression Value To: box I typed 10. I clicked OK, that dialogue closed, and in the Save As dialogue I changed the file name then I hit the Save button. Then I closed the original image. Then I opened the newly saved image. The file image is 1600 x 900 pixels and now the file size of that saved image is only 842KB.

So what are you not doing? Also, just telling us that "it didn't work" does not give us sufficient information to help you. We need you to provide the details of the steps you took (just as I did above) and also tell us what the result was that you were not satisfied with. Without details we can only guess what you might be doing and/or what you are doing wrong.

[terri232]

OK - in PSP 2018 I opened an image that I had posted to eBay and went to size - it showed 1600 as the width and 1200 as height and it says NEW SIZE above that. To the left it has the original size of 3072 and 2304 so I assume it will use the New Size!
I went to save as and used the compression to 10 and saved the image as jpg. I saved it and when I went to check it out, it is showing as 829 KB which I think is acceptable. I don't understand what I have been doing wrong because I have been using PPS for so many years and never had this problem.
Will post again if the problem persists.
Thank you.

[JoeB]

Glad to see you have it working for you. I suspect you missed a step somewhere the first time when it didn't work as expected.

[terri232]

JoeB: I finally have it working but I have one last question. Each time I use PSP18 for a picture, I have to go through this exercise to get the picture to the 1200 x 1600. Is there any way I can permanently save this setting?
Thanks so much!
Terri

[hartpaul]

Hi terri232,

1. With a large image loaded (greater than your 1600 x 1200 pixels) select your crop tool.
2. Click the Clear button either on the floating crop toolbar or on the tool options palette - third button after the Presets .
3. Under Pixel dimensions type in 1600 for W and 1200 for H and tick the Maintain Aspect ratio box.
4. Click the little down arrow beside the Presets and choose the top right button Save Preset and type in a name eg Ebay 1600 x 1200 pixels. Click OK.
5, Position your crop rectangle over the center of what you want , drag the side / top / bottom crop bars and move it until you have exactly what you want to show and click the Apply button.
You will now have a cropped image showing what you want but it will probably be too large.

You now need to resize that image. Click the pan tool and roll your mouse to get rid of that ugly extra area surrounding your image.

6. Do Image > Resize and select By Pixels. You will see that your Original Width is larger than 1600 pixels. Under New , Type in 1600 and you should see that the other value changes to 1200.

If it is greyed out then make sure Advanced settings is ticked and also Resample and Lock Aspect Ratio. I also have Resize all layers ticked but that should not matter in this case.

If there is not a link and lock between the New Width and New Height then you have forgotten to tick the Lock Aspect ratio. PSP will remember this setting fo the next time until you change it.

You can also get the settings under Standard sizes, but you will have to remember to tick Lock Aspect Ratio in case you decide to change the values. Click OK

Your image will now be cropped correctly and resized to what is required.

6. Click Save As and make sure jpg is selected. Type in the new name (to avoid overwriting your original), move the compression slider to get the size in KB (shown below the slider bar) that you want. A compression of 10 should give approximately 700 KB. You can also roll your mouse wheel to make changing the compression value easier.
Click OK and you should now have your image correctly saved and ready for Ebay.

[JoeB]

JoeB: I finally have it working but I have one last question. Each time I use PSP18 for a picture, I have to go through this exercise to get the picture to the 1200 x 1600. Is there any way I can permanently save this setting?

You had not previously mentioned that you also needed the short side to be 1200 pixels. You only said that the long side had to be 1600 pixels. Does the short side always have to be 1200 pixels and the long side always 1600 pixels? And of course the maximum file size matters also. These details are important in helping to determine the most efficient method of providing an image size - pixel size long and short, and file size.

[bruce1951]

And what if the 1200x1600 changes the perspective/aspect ratio?

bruce