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I-Need-To-Start-Resizing-My-Pictures-Anonymous
DIY Sprocket Solutions
Hey you, yeah you. Your photo is so big it’s blocking the sun.
When I started with Sprocket Websites, I learned something very interesting about myself. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I needed to join “I-need-to-start-resizing-my pictures-Anonymous”. I had no clue what I was doing. Our Facebook page needs a photo you say? Well, here! Let’s shove this gigantic image into a tiny box and see if we can make out what that section is supposed to say. Better yet, let’s take this teeny tiny picture and put it into a cavernous abyss and see how wide it can stretch! What fun this is!
I was wrong and so are you. Put down the mouse. Stop putting pictures where they don’t belong. It’s just not right. Your customers want to see your graphics, not that elephant that used to be a period. Don’t feel bad though; if you’re anything like me, you had no clue how to go about resizing the pictures to the proportions you needed. Everyone calm down, I’m here to help.
We have a few different options here, let me lead the way:
· The ‘why mess with it myself’ approach.
You’re online. You don’t have time to figure out how to work 15 different programs. I get it, been there done that. So find a site like one of these: shrinkpictures.com or picresize.com, drop the image in straight from your computer, type in the size you want and voila! Easy, free, done. You have time to update your Facebook.
· The ‘Yes, but I think I can crop/brighten/AND resize!’ approach.
You can always use a simple program like Microsoft Picture Manager or Windows Live Photo Gallery. These programs have a few more options than a regular free website for resizing. You can tweak your images a bit. These are pretty basic programs that allow you to crop your photos, brighten and change color of your photos, and finally to resize them.
· The ‘maybe I’d like to get a little more creative’ approach.
Feeling a bit more ambitious? Perhaps you have a bit of tweaking, poking, and prodding to do to your images? There are some software programs for photos that you can download for free (ex/ Shutterfly). These programs take the editing of Windows a little deeper. You can refine your images and edit them to exactly the way you like.
Which option you choose really depends on what you need. For the most basic needs, I recommend just picking a free online site or using one of the simple photo programs already on your computer. You’re really just dragging, dropping, and typing in what size you’d like your picture to be. Stay tuned next week for a cheat sheet of standard photo sizes for the big sites like Facebook & Twitter.
What approach do you use to resize/edit your images?
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Breanne Bannon
Breanne is a Content Writer, Social Media Marketeer, and Sales Associate for Sprocket Websites.
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