I have a photo I want to upload, but the site where I want to upload it will accept files with a maximum size of 40kb, and the photo is 100 kb. Is there any simple way to reduce the photo size, or am I out of luck unless I can scan another photo or find someone with some kind of photo editing software?
Send it to me. I have Fireworks and can do it for you.
E-mail is in my profile.
Download Irfanview. It’s an excellent freeware image file viewer that also converts formats, resizes, switches resolutions, colour depths, etc. Well worth the download.
Eva Luna… Get Irfanview at http://www.irfanview.com/ . It is free and wonderful for manipulating graphics.
Is there a specific reason why you can’t use special software?
Otherwise Irfanview is a very nice small and free image viewer and converter which can solve this problem and many others.
Very popular for very good reasons 
So do you guys like Irfanview or something?
Thanks…I will give it a shot, probably when I’m more awake than I am now. Other suggestions still welcome, of course.
I usually use Adobe Photoshop to convert images, although you might not have access to such expensive software.
Precisely. That’s why I was asking. It would be like using a tank to swat a mosquito.
I’m going to go ahead and assume you use Windows.
The GIMP is a very nice image editing program with lots of features. I’d say, for most purposes, it’s the equal of Photoshop. And it’s completely and totally free. I used it back when I was using Windows and, despite the warning, it never crashed on me.
How to reduce the size of your image: You can scale it down by opening the image, then clicking on “Image” on the opened image’s window, then selecting “Scale…”. You can then enter the size (in pixels) that you want the image to be. Or you can use the Crop/Resize tool (it looks like a scalpel).
Another thing to consider is the kind of image it is. If it’s a photograph, you’re better off saving it as a .jpg or a .png. If it has lots of areas of flat color, you can save it as a .gif and it’ll be much smaller than a .jpg.
If there is one thing you might not know if you never resized a jpeg image before. For every image format you can change the image size (in pixels) and this is what “Resize/resample” does. For jpegs you can also also change the compression ratio (technically only indirectly…) so that an image with the same (pixel) size will take less space, but you have to sacrifice image quality. In our beloved Irfanview you find this in the “Save as…” box under “Options”. In the JPEG tab there is a slidebar called “Save Quality”. Of course you can combine both techniques to find a combination of quality and (pixel) size that meets your requirements.
Aye–Irfan is awesome and it’s compact, easy to download and free.
<HIJACK>
As the original OP seems to have been answered I’m going to drop a hijack question in here:
I have a 5Mp digicam which produces pretty huge jpegs.
I’d like a way to easily reduce the size of a whole folder full of images. Just reducing the size by a set percentage (while maintaining aspect ratio) would do but it would be really cool to have a ‘resize to less than x kilobytes’ option.
I have access to The GIMP, Photoshop etc.
Anyone know how?
</HIJACK>
…and once more Irfanview saves the day. (and, no, they don’t pay me :D)
It has a batch conversion feature. You compile a list of images, set the output settings like absolute or relative size and output quality (for JPEG).
Although “output quality” is very closely linked to the compression ratio it is a slightly different thing. So you have no guarantee that a specific size is achieved, but the images will be reasonably similar.
By the wqy, thanks to everyone! I fooled around a little with Irfan last night, and was able to resize and upload my photo. I’ll probably monky around with it some more, once I find my CD-ROMs.