Adding images to your web
pages can contribute to the instructional and visual appeal of a page.
However, images can also take up a significant amount of web space.
For those of you familiar with web authoring software such as Netscape
Compopser and Dreamweaver, you may be aware of the option to click on
an image and drag it to resize. This does NOT descrease the actual size
of the image at all, so that if you have a 4'x4' original image and
you click and drag that image in Composer to make it 2'x2' on the page,
the original, large 4'x4' image is still sitting on the server taking
up a lot of space and download time. There are three main ways to resize
an image:
- Crop the image
- Reduce the actual pixel
size of the image
- Save the image as JPG
and increase the compression
Cropping an Image
Cropping an image is useful
when there are elements in the image that are unnecessary. For example,
in the image below you may want the portion of the image with the Colosseum,
but don't care about having the surrounding areas.
To crop out the part of the
image you want, click on the Crop tool- 
.
Then take your mouse and click and drag on the image to select the area
of the image you want to keep. Once selected, double-click within the
selected area to crop down to the selected area (see below).
Reducing the Pixel Size
of the Image
To reduce the actual pixel
size of an image, choose IMAGE>RESIZE. A dialogue box will apprea
asking you to resize by actual pixels or by percentage of original.
If you are comfortable with pixel sizes, select that option and enter
the pixel dimensions you want. If you are not comfortable with pixel
dimensions, choose the Percent of Original option. Enter a percentage
in the fields. For example, if you enter 70, the image will be resized
to be 70% of the original image size. It is not recommended that you
use this resize function to make your image any more than very slightly
larger. If you increase the size of your image more than a little using
this option, you will notice that the image becomes pixelated, or grainy.
It is best to start out with an image about the size of what you want,
or larger, and decrease the size as needed rather than increasing the
size.
Increasing the Compression
Of An Image
This option is available
only when saving images in the JPG format. Saving as JPG is saving with
a "lossy" compression. You have the option in PaintShop Pro
to control the amount of compression of your JPG files. The smaller
the compression, the higher the quality and size of the image. The greater
the compression, the smaller the file size, but you also lose image
quality. If you use this option, it is best to play around with it for
awhile to learn what levels of compression you can use to make your
file smaller while not losing too much image quality.
To modify compression, choose
FILE>SAVE AS. When the SAVE AS dialogue box pops up, under file type
make sure to select JPG. You will notice an OPTIONS button to the right,
in the SAVE AS box. Click this button and you will see a slider scale.
You may click and drag along this scale to increase or decrease the
compression of your JPG files.
