Summary: Images from cameras are often too big to display on websites, they're often bigger than people's screens. We'll look at resizing and cropping photos.
How do I make a picture smaller so I can post it on myspace? The pictures I take are huge when I post them.
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I'm going to assume you mean smaller visibly. Perhaps the picture, when displayed, is too large to fit on the screen and you want to make a version of the picture that might fit in a smaller area on the screen.
Windows comes with a tool that will allow you to make these kinds of simple changes.
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What we'll really be doing is "image editing". There are many, many programs out there that will allow you to manipulate images; the most common you might recognize is Adobe Photoshop, but there are many others. They're can be extremely powerful and allow you to make many different types of changes to a photo or image.
But if all you want to do is resize an image, the Paint program that comes with Windows will do just fine.
We'll operate on this example picture:

That image is 200 pixels wide by 342 pixels high.
Let's assume that's too big for our purposes, and we want it to be smaller on the screen.
First open the picture in Paint. Paint should be on Start, All Programs..., Accessories. Once you have Paint open, hit its File menu, and click the Open item, and locate and load your image file:

Let's assume we want the new picture to be half the size of the original - 100 pixels wide and 171 high. Click on the Image menu and click on Stretch/Skew.... In Paint terminology we'll be "stretching" the image, which includes making it smaller. You'll see this dialog:

Enter 50 for both the Horizontal and Vertical percentages and press OK. The result might look like this:

Now hit File, Save As... and save the new, smaller image using a different name. Here's the result, next to the original:

There's another approach to making a picture smaller called "cropping". Rather than resizing the entire picture, we simply cut out portions of the picture. In Paint one way to do this is to click on the Select tool:

And then clicking and dragging a smaller rectangle within the image:

Now:
Click on Edit and then Copy to copy the selected area to the clipboard
Click on File and then New to create a new image
Click on Edit and then Paste to paste clipboard contents into the new image.
The result might be something like this:

Once again hit File, Save As... and save the new image using a different name. And again, here's the result next to the original:

Here you can see that the picture is "smaller", in that it takes up less space, but the portion of the original that it still displays is the same size.
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A few additional notes.
It's important never to overwrite your original when making changes to an image. Each change you make has the potential of losing information. For example making an image smaller makes it less clear. You can resize that smaller image back to its original size, but it'll look fuzzier than the original. Similarly once you crop an image, you can't "restore" the cropped areas.
Resizing images is a great way to make pictures more friendly to folks you might email. I'm always getting pictures from people who've sent me their original high resolution image that doesn't even fit on my screen. Yes, there are ways I can view it, but there was simply no reason to send that huge file in the first place. Resizing it, as outlined above, not only makes it easier to view it can also significantly reduce the size of the email carrying it as well.
I use Paint in this example because it's with every copy of Windows. It's not really that good a program, and can be a little difficult to use. If you find yourself doing this frequently, you may find that many image viewers also provide rudimentary editing capabilities for cropping and resize and more. And the next step, getting a "real" image editing program, is a recommended option as well.
Related:
Ask Leo! - Blurry images: why do images on some web pages start out blurry and then clear up?
Ask Leo! - How can I keep the images I post on the web from being copied?
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Article C2984 - April 4, 2007
hope you get this,maybe this would make a difference on my earlier note i think i am talking about pixelsi need to change them to 800xi think it was 600. told you i was comp ignorant.
Posted by: marvin at September 7, 2008 3:45 PMI'm with Susan Bird. None of this makes sense to me. I tried to use Paint but it's speaking pixels and I'm speaking mb. I just want to reduce my 2.34mb to 2mb. Why is that so hard??
Posted by: Valerie at October 21, 2008 10:52 AMMY MOM ..COULD YOU SHRINK A 12X14 THAT IS NEAR 70 YRS. INTO A LOCKET SO SHE COULD HOLD HER GRANDMA NEXT TO HER HEART? LONG STORY, SHE'S SLIPPING AWAY, HER GRANDMA WAS THE ONE TO KEEP HER FROM THE INSANITY OF HER CHILDHOOD. MY MOTHER IS AVICTIM OF ABUSE. aLTHIEMERS IS SUCH A DRAG. PLEASE RESPOND. THANX, COLLEEN
29-Nov-2008
Hello, Thank you sooo much! I love this site!! Thanks for being there for me/us. I had two questions and they were both answered at the same time. Thanks
Posted by: Shelley at December 6, 2008 8:41 AMI have bought my mum a locket for xmas and need to resize photo's from my computer to fit into the locket is there a software programme I can get, please advise the best results.
Thanks
Posted by: Sara Walker at December 16, 2008 2:25 AMHi Leo. Love the site.
Posted by: Doug Bays at February 24, 2009 11:52 AMThere are a number of dedicated Image Resizers available that just require a Right Click on the image/photo and a selection of sizes, ie: Small(640X480) Med(800X600, Large(1024X768), or a Custom box to type in any size.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx > and this one will handle Vista as well Hope this helps.
Thankyou so much for your help, I have tried so many times to reduce a picture but it never seemed to work your article was so easy to follow was beginning to give up hope.
Posted by: Rita at March 3, 2009 12:06 AMThis was so easy to follow and worked great.
Thank you
Posted by: sleepy at June 12, 2009 11:01 AMThanks for this_ I have spent alot of time searching the computer for ways to make image re-sizing work for me so I could email my pics..They were so large..Your instructions were perfect!!!
Posted by: peggy at September 1, 2009 10:31 PMThis was a great article, thanks! I keep finding pictures on the internet that I want for my laptop background, but they're too big, and now I can actually use them without having insanely blown up images!
Posted by: Michelle at October 27, 2009 3:21 PM