How to Reduce the Size of a Photo or a Picture

Pictures can dramatically increase the size of your documents, storage space and can even cause you to waste bandwidth on your website. Photos from DSLRs, high mega-pixel smartphones, and screenshots from high resolution devices have the highest file sizes. Most of us like to reduce the size of images stored on our phones and computers to either save space or post them online.

To reduce the file size of a photo, you can either apply compression, reduce the picture resolution, crop or delete unwanted metadata. Image compression is best achieved by using the .jpeg format, which has an adaptive compression scheme that allows modifying at varying levels of compressions. This guide will teach you how to use either photo editing applications or online tools to reduce the size of any photo.

Method 1: Using Microsoft Paint

1. Launch Windows Paint on your PC by typing ‘paint’ in the start menu and then hitting Enter or pressing Windows Key + R, typing ‘mspaint’ and hitting the Enter key.
2. Click on File > Open and then select the photo whose size you want to reduce.
3. Under the ‘Home’ tab, select the ‘Resize’ button. Check the box next to ‘Maintain aspect ratio’. This maintains the original height and length proportions of the image.
4. Select ‘Percentage’ or ‘Pixels’ and specify the value for the horizontal and vertical sides of the image. For example, if you’re adjusting using Percentage and the original image size is is 1024×768, typing ‘50’ in the horizontal input box will reduce the image by half.
5. Click OK, save the file and exit paint.

Method 2: Using Microsoft Office Picture Manager

You can also use Microsoft Office Picture Manager to reduce your photo size. With this method, you need to have Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 installed on your computer.

1. Right click on the image you want to compress and go to Open With > Microsoft Office Picture Manager.
2. Once the image is open, click Compress Pictures.
3. On the ‘Edit Pictures’ pane, select Compress Pictures.
4. Next, you will be presented with four compression options, choose any of the following:

• Documents to compress your photos for insertion into a document
• Web pages to compress your photos for the Web
• E-mail messages to compress your photos for e-mail
• Don’t Compress – Select this option if you don’t want to compress your photo.

5. Click on the Save icon and exit the application.

Method 3: Using compressjpeg.com

There are tons of other free web services like imageoptimizer.net, compressimage.toolur.com, compress.photos, etc that can reduce the size of your photos for free. In this method, we’ll be using Compress Jpeg.

1. Go to http://compressjpeg.com/
2. Select UPLOAD FILES and select the file(s) you wish to upload and compress.
3. Click DOWNLOAD ALL to download your newly compressed image(s).

Clicking on the image will show you a comparison between the old photo and the newly compressed one.

Method 4: Using GIMP

GIMP is an open source, multi-platform photo editing software which you can use to reduce the size of your large photos without changing the image dimensions. Bear in mind that, the less space an image takes, the more detail from the original image is lost. Try not to save too many times as it causes more image degradation.

1. Download and install GIMP from here for your operating system.
2. Click on File > Open and select the image you want to compress.
3. Click on File > Save As and a ‘Save Image’ dialog box will open with the filename already typed in the name box.
4. Click on Save and a JPEG dialog will come up showing the quality control options. Reduce the image quality by dragging the Quality slider towards the left while checking the image preview to ensure the compression is satisfactory.
5. Click on Save.

Method 5: Using WhatsApp

WhatsApp has a pretty decent image compression mechanism and can be improvised to compress images too.

1. Attach your desired photo in any chat and send it.
2. You can access your newly compressed photo with your phone’s file manager or a computer at WhatsApp > Media > WhatsApp Images > Sent and copy it to your desired destination.

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