# Anyway to reduce the size of a Jpeg photo ? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 31, 2008, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyway-to-reduce-the-size-of-a-jpeg-photo/443371 "2008-03-31T12:26:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2008, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyway-to-reduce-the-size-of-a-jpeg-photo/443371/21 "2008-04-01T08:00:35Z")
[QUOTE=indian] I will have to adjust the settings of the camera now.. and locate the camera help guide first.. :smack: [/QUOTE] I have to say I usually find it much much easier to adjust stuff afterwards on the PC, but YMMV. Have you already cropped out everything apart from the part which you are interested in? And can you perhaps get away with dropping it into B&W? That’s effectively 2-bit colour and gives an even bigger reduction than going to 8-bit. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Zagna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d2c977/32.png) [@El\_Zagna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Zagna)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2008, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyway-to-reduce-the-size-of-a-jpeg-photo/443371/22 "2008-04-01T12:52:08Z")
[QUOTE=indian] This picture was downloaded from my sony digital camera .. I have to send it by e-mail. hence the size reduction.. It shows a machine part which needs trouble shooting, and hence picture quality is important.. I will have to adjust the settings of the camera now.. and locate the camera help guide first.. :smack: [/QUOTE] Reducing the dimensions of the picture that your camera takes will in essence reduce the detail as well. The jpeg compression algorithm is quite good, and I think you’ll be surprised at how little quality is lost even at the higher compression levels. Almost any graphics program will be able to resize a jpeg, so try that first. On the other hand a single picture of 3MB is pretty big and almost certainly unnecessary for ordinary purposes, so adjusting your camera’s settings wouldn’t be a bad idea anyway. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2008, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyway-to-reduce-the-size-of-a-jpeg-photo/443371/23 "2008-04-01T21:09:01Z")
[QUOTE=Kinthalis] If, on the other hand it’s meant to be viewed in a monitor a say 800x600 then you can do that and set the DPI to 75 (or is 74?) [/QUOTE] Computer screen resolution is 72 dpi 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![diggleblop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ac91a4/32.png) [@diggleblop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/diggleblop)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2008, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyway-to-reduce-the-size-of-a-jpeg-photo/443371/24 "2008-04-02T01:06:10Z")
Regular old Microsoft Paint can do it too. Open Paint\>Image\>Stretch/Skew\>Adjust percentage of pic\>Save As. ---
**Author:** ![JR\_Brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JR\_Brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JR_Brown)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2008, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyway-to-reduce-the-size-of-a-jpeg-photo/443371/25 "2008-04-02T16:45:10Z")
[QUOTE=elfkin477] I don’t know why this works, but it does: If you take an image you’ve made in the sort of paint program you need to buy (I use paint shop pro XI, for example) and open it in MS paint, then save it with a different file name, it gets **much** smaller. The two images look virtually identical too, which is why I’m confused as to what’s happening. Here, I uploaded [two versions of a picture](http://www.geocities.com/mulderscreek/photos/mspaint.html) I was manipulating. The second photo looks the same to me except for the bottom right corner being _slightly_ less bright a blue. I’ve used this to shrink photos from 1mb to 250kb this way too. I think it’s worth experimenting with, though you’re using larger photos to start with. [/QUOTE] I’ve had this happen in reverse; opening a large TIFF file in Photoshop, making some minor changes and saving it made the file several-fold larger. After fiddling around with ResEdit (Mac person here) a bit, I decided that it was Photoshop adding a “preview” thumbnail, which for some reason was larger than the base image itself. Deleting the thumbnail made it all better. JRB ---
**Author:** ![Ignatz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3be4f8/32.png) [@Ignatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignatz)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyway-to-reduce-the-size-of-a-jpeg-photo/443371/26 "2008-04-04T02:42:30Z")
Pardon, but I’ve often wondered where people in India go for tech support. I love this Board. ---
**Author:** ![Indian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@Indian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indian)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyway-to-reduce-the-size-of-a-jpeg-photo/443371/27 "2008-04-04T04:38:23Z")
[QUOTE=Ignatz] Pardon, but I’ve often wondered where people in India go for tech support. I love this Board. [/QUOTE] 😃😃 ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyway-to-reduce-the-size-of-a-jpeg-photo/443371/28 "2008-04-04T06:30:45Z")
[Adode Express](http://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html/?sdid=BUQPN) is free and has been well reviewed [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyway-to-reduce-the-size-of-a-jpeg-photo/443371.md?page=1)