Does your graphic / image need to go on a diet?

Do your friends and associates beg you to stop sending HUGE images via email? Do your website's pages take forever to appear because the image is appearing pixel-by-pixel, time enough to make a cup of tea?

If you answered "Yes!" to any of those questions, then you're ready to learn a quick and easy solution to putting less-weighty images on your websites, and in your emails, and keeping your friends and family happy ... read on!

You can fix your photos online! That's right - you don't have to have Photoshop or any other editing software - you just upload your photo to Snipshot.com so you can: * reduce the weight * crop the edge/s * reduce the size [height x width] I love this service and use it all the time for simple photo changes, whether I'm in my office or at a client's premises, or overseas.

Using your digital camera Isn't technology wonderful? We can all use digital cameras, download photos [images] to our computers in the blink of an eye, attach them to an email, and share our pics with families and friends. What you may not know is that most digital cameras have THREE SETTINGS for the type of photo you want to take: 'best' setting - perfect if your images are going to be sent to Vogue magazine or any other glossy mag which needs the absolute best quality of photo [but useless for web and email] 'medium' quality setting - if you want to use these photos for the internet and perhaps print to flyers or documents, use this setting 'low' or 'web' setting - perfect for the internet and email. So what's the difference? Well, for starters - the weight makes the difference. If you use the 'best' setting, the weight of each photo could be these sizes: 'best' setting - 2-5MB [sending by email will take a long time; if used on a website, you can make sandwiches while waiting for this image to 'appear' on the page] 'medium' quality setting - 200k - 1MB [still too big for the website, but ok to email if you need to use this image to print at any time] 'low' or 'web' setting - 20-200k - perfect! This will appear instantly on your webpage, you can have more than one photo per webpage, and as an attachment this image weighs practically nothing!

Images have WEIGHT and SIZE Weight is the physical weight of the saved image [photos are saved as .jpg]. Size refers to the height and width. Did you know that if you take a photo at the 'best' setting, it has millions upon millions of pixels [little dots of colour to make up the photo], and if you try to view it on your computer, it could be as big as 6+ sheets of typing paper? Imagine sending THAT via email! No wonder people get annoyed!

So - how do I fix my images?

First of all I decide if they are to be on a website or sent by email. When the answer is 'Yes!' to either [website / email], I work out what the actual amount of space each photo will take up.

Let's imagine a laptop computer monitor is about 700 pixels wide.

Most images for your site will be a LOT smaller than that, so just to be on the safe side, save them to a size about the same as a normal photo - say 400-500 pixels wide.

OK - that's all we need to know!

I'll use a snapshot taken recently saved at the 'medium' setting.

Weight = 404KB [almost half a MB / Megabyte] heavy!
Size = 1 computer screen

Let's get started!

First thing to do is click the link to go to SnipShot.com - a new window will open.

I then click the BROWSE button on the Snipshot screen where it says, 'Open from your computer', so that I can search my 'photos' folder for the image [this is a sample, it's not 'live' - go to Snipshot to use the real service].



When I double-click to select the image from my computer, it starts uploading immediately.

I can see the message on the screen, 'Just a moment please...'.

When the image appeared on the screen, I was already in 'resize' mode [I can tell because the button RESIZE is highlighted in the top Menu bar]. If I wanted to CROP, I would click the Crop button at the top of the screen.

The original image looks like this:



After it appears on the snipshot window, it looks like this:





See the red DOTS on each corner? You grab those with your mouse to RESIZE - drag in any direction to see what happens!

UNDO! UNDO!

TIP! You can always UNDO the last resize [and you can go back further by continuing to click UNDO] - just click the UNDO button in the menu:

 

TO RESIZE

I moved my mouse to the bottom right corner, clicked the little red 'handle' [box] and started to drag that corner towards the top left corner, to reduce the overall size. I could see what size it was, in the little 'size' box which appeared next to my mouse as I dragged the 'handle'. I stopped dragging the mouse at 450 pixels wide.

TO SAVE

As soon as SNIPSHOT re-created the image, I clicked the SAVE button.

 

A little dialog box appeared so I could choose which TYPE of image file I wanted [I clicked on 'Save as GIF']. I also had the option to save at HIGH RES[olution] - but you would not use this for an image to appear on webpage or in a newsletter.

The new image was saved to my computer. The new name starts with 'snipshot' so I can easily find it on the desktop [or in the folder wherever Downloaded items are stored].

The names will look something like this when first saved to your computer:



You can now change the snipshot name to something that suits this photo or graphic, for example 'barchart-01.gif'.

When I checked my computer's desktop, the new image was now 28Kb!

That's amazing! It was 404kb!  It's now about the size of a regular photo but OH SO LIGHT! My image is now perfect to email or add to a webpage.

All I have to do now is click once on the image name on my computer to go into TYPING MODE and type over the name of the image, making it something easier to read.

TIP! Do NOT put SPACES in an image name - only dashes, hyphens, underscores to separate words.

That's it! Easy peasy!

PS - There are no instructions on the SnipShot.com page because it's very simple and easy to use, with buttons clearly marked. Pop over there now and have a play with the demo images!

I'm sure you'll love it ... and I do hope these short instructions have been of some help.

You may also like to pop over to the BLOG and comment on any one of the blog 'posts' [messages].

http://buildawebsitetonight.blogspot.com

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