Image Re-scaling - HELP, PLEASE!!

[jaydeeare]

I hope someone can help me out here.

I'm new to digital photography, but have been well used to 35mm SLR's.

My problem is that my file sizes are reasonable enough for the web.

However, I have seen other photographs that are around the same physical size as my own, but looking at the 'Properties' of that photo, it shows the photo as 1px X 1px Scaled 500px X 330px(GIF format) and the file size is 43bytes! Mine at around 500px X 400 are in the region of 50Kb! I use JPG format.

When I have copied this picture to see how it is done (trying to work backwards), it IS extremely small (as expected from 1px) and with a black mask.

Does anyone know how I can get my photos into this style format, and which program could be used, please?

I have access top Photoshop, Fireworks & Paintshop Pro.

I use an iMAC at home and process using Preview.

I really would appreciate it if anyone can help, or point me in the right direction at least :)

[benjidog]

This has been discussed at length for PCs but unfortunately not for iMAC. Maybe we have a few iMAC users who could help though?

Good luck.

[K urgess]

You wouldn't want to use GIF format for much, Johnny.
The colour is reduced to 256 for the format which is why the files are so small.
If you really want to change to GIF format just open the file in your favourite manipulation program and use the program's "Save As..." function and pick GIF. It will properly ask you all sorts of daft questions but just go with the default or experiment if you feel brave.
Any pictures uploaded to the gallery are converted to JPG anyway which will make a difference to the picture size and could make them below recommended minimum size.
Cheers
Kris

[jaydeeare]

Thanks for this.
Brian, I'll take a look and back and see what I can find in PC's as I have to use one at work :(

Kris, I too prefer JPG's - much better than GIF's :)

[benjidog]

Thanks for this.
Brian, I'll take a look and back and see what I can find in PC's as I have to use one at work :(

Kris, I too prefer JPG's - much better than GIF's :)

There are several threads on this topic - I updated one recently with information about a free add on from Microsoft for XP machines which works pretty well and integrates with Explorer.