About ITIT for StudentsIT for FacultyIT for StaffServicesHelpDocumentationIT Home

Technology Tip of the Week - February 7, 2007

Reducing Image Size

Screen shots, scanned photos and images all make wonderful visual additions to PowerPoint presentations, web pages and Word documents. However, sometimes these images can be very large and hinder your distribution of materials online (or even strain storage on your USB and floppy disks). Although you can click on the image and drag the corner handles down to reduce the visible size, this process doesn't reduce the actual size of the image and often results in a squeezed or strange-looking graphic. There is an easy fix to this using Adobe PhotoShop. The Adobe PhotoShop program is on computers in every Center for Instructional Technology on each campus so just load up your images on your USB drive,  CD or departmental shared drive and come on down!

To reduce an image in size and scale follow this easy wizard:

  1. Open PhotoShop by selecting Start - All Programs - Adobe Photoshop
  2. Open the file you want to resize by selecting File - Open option
  3. Go to Help on the menu bar and choose Resize image...
  4. Choose the Online option.
  5. Click on the Next button.
  6. Adjust the size to your  needs*. Note that if you anticipate that users will be printing out your web page, the widest setting is 535 pixels to capture the page correctly. Keep this in mind as you are sizing your graphic.
  7. Click on the Next button.
  8. Click on the Finish button
  9. If necessary, to increase clarity, select Filter - Sharpen - Unsharp Mask.
  10. When satisfied with the results, choose OK.

You can go through this process several times and save your graphic in different sizes to give yourself some options.

*Note: For best results never reduce your graphic by more than 50%. If you find that your graphic needs to be reduced more than 50 % your best option is to reduce it in steps. This means that you first reduce it by 50%, perform the Unsharp Mask function and save as a new graphic. Then reduce the modified graphic again by an additional percentage to get it down to the preferred size, re-apply the Unsharp Mask and re-save it.


For more information on this process accompanied by screen shots see: http://it.ccri.edu/Documentation/Web_Training/optimizing_screen_shots.shtml

To see Norm Grant's great video demo on this process go to: http://it.ccri.edu/camtasia_tutorials/Resize%20Graphics%20Web/Resize%20Grapics%20for%20the%20Web.swf

For more help with these features, please contact one of the IT Instructional Support team (Norm Grant, Gene Grande or Linda Beith) or faculty mentors Tony Basilico or Kathy Beauchene.

Website of the Week

Guide to Grammar and Writing website

Check out this outstanding grammar and writing resource website at Capitol City Community College at: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/  This website has many wonderful resources that are free for your students to use. I particularly liked the whole set of PowerPoint presentations on grammar on this site at: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/powerpoint.htm. Add a link to this site in a Pipeline course page, your faculty web or your WebCT course for  your students. It's a wonderful review and practice tool. Enjoy!

Feel free to post your thoughts or opinions of this site in the Teaching Forum message board.

These tips are provided by the Department of Information Technology instructional support team. If you have any questions on these tips, or wish to offer your own, please feel free to contact Linda Beith at lbeith@ccri.edu or call 825-2487. View an archive of past technology tips at http://it.ccri.edu/Training/Tips/tip_week.shtml.
Go to top of page