So you want to put some photos on this web site? Good for you!! It’s fun and easy, but you do have to have the photos properly prepared before you start to download to make things easy and smooth.

I always use the photo manipulation program called “Photoshop Elements” that is put out by Adobe. It’s a wonderful program that costs less than $90.00 at COSTCO and can do way more than I will ever use. Follow along and let me show you how to use this program to get your photos ready for the web.

To start off, open the program to “Quick Fix Photos”.

Once the program comes up, go to the “Open” folder icon in the upper left corner and choose the folder where you have saved the photos you want to work with. You can also get to the “Open” command from the “File” command in the extreme upper left corner. Choose the photo you want and click “OPEN”.

Now your photo is being shown in the Photoshop program. At this time you can make any adjustments to the photo you would like. Once finished with that, click the “Image” icon in the upper left corner, then down to the “Resize” icon and click, and then over to the “Image Size” icon and click.

A window comes up with a number of things you can change within the photo. We want to make the photo small enough to download easily, but not so small that it doesn’t “show well” on the web.

The very top number (Pixel Dimension) lets you know how large the file is. The larger the file, the longer it takes to download. You change this number by changing the next two boxes down.

The next two boxes control how large the photo is. The Height and Width are “locked together” so you only have to change one to get the other one to change. VERY easy! I usually change the Height box, as that is what I am used to. Highlight the box, and try inserting the number 600.

Now, go back up to the top number (Pixel Dimension) and see what it has changed to. The number you want to end up with is between “1.2M” and “1.4M”. If this number is not in this range, go back and change the Height until it is. If you want to get real fancy, you can play with this number to get an exact sized file, but I find for most applications these “about” numbers are good enough.

Skip the next two lines, and jump down to “Resolution”. For most all applications on the web, make this number “72”. Most cameras it will be this anyway, but still check it every time! Now click “OK”.

Next you should see in the center of the screen a smaller version of the same photo you had. We are almost done! Go up again to the upper left corner and click on “File”, and go down to “Save As” and click.

A new window opens up for saving the photo. The top line is for you to choose the place where you want the photo to be saved in. Make sure you have the correct location here, or you might loose the photo forever!

Move down in the window to “File name” and give the photo a new name. If the photo had been called “14” before, I like to use “e14” so I can tell them apart. DON’T DUMP THE OLD PHOTO!! Make a new copy, as you might like to come back to the original some time!

Finally, look at the “Format” line. It should say “JPEG”. Don’t change anything else on this page. Click “OK”

Now comes the last step. On this new window that comes up, it will ask what “Quality” you wish to save it as. I always use the “slider” control here. If you are saving this photo to print, have the “Quality” way up to the “12” setting (large file). If you are going to download to the web, move the slider to the “1” setting (small file). Click “OK”.

To finish things off, right click on the small copy of the photo you have been working on down in the lower section of the window. Click on the “Close” option, and your done!