Get Your Pictures Ready for the Internet

This article is a continuation of How to Import Your Pictures to you Computer. Now that you have your pictures downloaded to your computer, it’s time to get them ready for the web.

As you may or may not know, the pictures you download from your camera are generally far too big for practical use on the web. The first step will be to get them to a good usable size, in regards to both the picture’s dimensions and file size.

Microsoft has a free utility called, simply enough, Image Resizer (Direct Download). Installing this utility will add a “Resize Pictures” option when you right-click on a picture or multiple selected pictures. Alternatively, you can select an image or images and to go File menu and choose Resize Pictures.

Choosing this option will bring up a menu where you can choose to create Small, Medium, or Large images (Advanced options are also available if you wish to enter custom sizes or choose how the files are processed, but for our purposes here we’ll stick with the default options). For modern day web use, the Medium size is a good candidate.

The best part about this utility is that it doesn’t harm your original images; it makes a copy of your images at the designated size and leaves the original photo unharmed.

Now that you’ve got your photos resized, get ready for the fun part; sharing them!

There are many options for free photo hosts on the web. The one I’ll recommend is Flickr.com. Flickr is an easy and dependable source for free photo hosting and there is a great community of photographers of all ages and skill levels. Simply sign-up for a free account and start uploading those photos!