Duh! You leave the original as is and save the reduced size for posting as
a separate file. The originals from my camera are 2560 x 1920 px, far
larger than will fit on any average user's monitor and the file sizes are as
large as 2 MB, no one wants to download a bunch of files that large. The
only time you need all that information is if you are making very large
prints.

Wolf wrote:
| A current thread asks about monitor resolutions so that images could
| be sent to fit most monitors. IMO, that is not a good idea. Your
| image file should be the original, if at all possible. If you do
| think that
| resizing it is desirable, reduce it, don't enlarge it. See below for
| the reasons why. And reduce it as little as possible.
|
| The display software can and will take care of resizing the image
| display if that's what the end user wants. But that resizing of the
| display will not change the image file itself.
|
| IMO, the only reason for resizing an image is to reduce the file size,
| to make transmission via the internet faster. But in doing this, you
| will permanently lose image information, so it's a better idea to
| compress the image, not resize it. Compressing cause some information
| loss, but much less than resizing. (Cameras do a "lossless"
| compression, which means that you can compress the image another 50%
| or so with no noticeable loss of quality at the usual display or
| printing sizes.)
|
| I think it might be a good idea to post two sizes of picture. 800x600
| will give you a nice small files size, around 200K, so that the people
| on dial-up can download it in a reasonable time. Files around 1200x800
| or larger (files size 400K or more) are suitable for people on
| broadband.
|
| Tech talk (you've been warned ;-))
|
| There are two issues he the actual image size, and the displayed
| image size. They are by no means the same thing, although they are
| related. Both are measured in pixels, but that is all they have in
| common.
|
| For example, if your monitor is at 1280 x 1024 pixels, then any image
| smaller than this can be displayed as is. An actual 800x600 image will
| display in the center of the display area with more or less white (or
| black) space around it.
|
| The smaller image could be expanded to fit the larger display area.
| The display software does this by replacing blocks of pixels by larger
| blocks of pixels. In doing this, it will distort some of the image
| information, adding small detail where is none, for example. The
| effect of this will be seen most obviously on diagonal lines, which
| will often be turned into stair steps, called the jaggies. Better
| software will smooth the jaggies, but there's a limit to what can be
| done.
|
| OTOH, if the image is 1600x1200 pixels, the display software can
| reduce the displayed image to 1280x1024. It does this by replacing
| groups of pixels with smaller groups of pixels. This process loses
| some image information, so that the displayed image will not have the
| same clarity of small details, for example.
|
| Most image viewers allow you to zoom in or out. This changes the
| displayed image size.
|
| In no case is the original image changed in any way.
|
| When you resize the original image, the image processing software does
| exactly what the display software does, but this time the changes are
| permanent. The image file will be larger or smaller, depending on
| which way you resized the image. In both cases, the image information
| will be distorted. The smaller image will have less image
| information. Note that you cannot recover this, it is permanently
| lost. The larger image will have added false information. If you
| reduce an enlarged image, then some of that false information will be
| retained (and you can't tell
| beforehand what it will be.)
|
| HTH