Resizing pictures

[ame]

Rescaling picture size

the pictures which we post in the forum pages have maximum size limits which are given here: viewtopic.php?p=71#p71.

Please restrict picture sizes to not greater than 800 x 600 pixels, except on special topics which are indicated.

this does not mean that the pictures should be exactly this size. different shapes are naturally allowed, taken that the width of the pictures is not be more than 800 pixels and/or the height not more 600 pixels. the maximum sizes are given so that the viewing of forum pages is comfortable also in smaller screens without too much scrolling back and forth, up and down.

the original size of the pictures from different LK live cameras vary largely. for example the red deer camera gives very large pictures. there the sizes of these need fixed before posting. descriptions of different ways of how to resize pictures have posted in the Technical pages in several places earlier. i'll collect here so that it will be easier to find them.

[ame]

one way to adjust the size of pictures is to adjust your user settings in the photohost which you are using. this probably the easiest way as resizing then happens automatically when you upload pictures to the photohost. then the pictures which you post will not exceed the limits.

one commonly used photohost is Photobucket. here i shall describe how to set user preferences there. other photohosts probably have something similar which you can fix so that the uploaded pictures will automatically be rescaled to a preset size. here's how to do it in Photobucket:

you'll find your settings here on the top bar of the Photobucket window, on the right side of the "Search"-button. click your icon:


in the next window select "Albums" and in the bottom click "Customize upload options"


then select your choice, in our case 800x600. this fixed selection will maintain the aspect ratio of pictures and it will not stretch smaller pictures either.

[ame]

the Paint program in Windows
is an easy and quick tool for some basic editing of pictures, not only for resizing pictures. i made pictures which show where to find some of the useful tools in Paint to start with. i hope this will make it easy and fast to learn how to use some of the tools that there are (faster than i learned: it took me a long time before i discovered them one by one. and this here below is practically all i've learnt ).

open the picture with Paint and then it's a good idea to always first save the work with a new name, and after some editing steps with a new name again. this way, if something should go wrong in the editing you can return to the original or previous version. click on the blue box on top-left to find Save and other things. there are an Undo- and a Redo-buttons on the bottom line above the editing area, too, but they cancel only the last operation, at least in the older versions of Paint.


marked in the picture:
red arrow: click A to insert a textbox on the picture. making the box Opaque makes the surface behind the text white (or any chosen colour)
black rectangle: select different shapes for drawing (circles, arrows etc).
green arrow: more shapes.
blue oval: thickness and other things of the outline of shapes
between blue oval and black box: filling of the shape with colour, which can be selected on the right.
orange diamond: Select-tool for cropping a picture. cropping leaves the selected part. to cut a piece away from picture use ctrl-X. then the cutting can be pasted to a new picture with ctrl-V.
different colours can be selected for a drawn object from the palette on the right. -on the lowest line the original size of the picture is shown: 900 x 600 px.
orange arrow: the Resize button.

in the next picture i have selected the eaglets from my screen capture. the selection is shown with a dashed line.


under the picture on the bottom line in the centre you can see the size of the picture (here 1065 x 711 px), the size of the file 307.2 KB and on the left the size of the selected picture (here 388 x 291 px). adjusting the size of selection to a fixed size by dragging the mouse is usually rather difficult. the much easier way is to use the Resize-function.

the size of the picture can be altered by clicking Resize (marked in the first picture above with orange arrow on the right side of Select), after which the window shown in the picture below will open.


it's useful to lock the Aspect ratio first (marked with red rectangle): then the shape of the picture will not change (it will not be stretched or shrunk in one direction more than the other). shrinking a picture can't be reversed without picture quality getting worse (remember saving with a new name). too much enlargement is not good either (picture will get 'grainy').

then you can select resizing by a fixed percentage or fixed pixel size (green oval). selecting either width (horizontal) or height (vertical) is enough: the other dimension will then resize automatically correctly if you have ticked the Maintain aspect ratio- box. -skewing the picture i have never used. after you are finished click OK (or Cancel if you come to other thoughts). if the picture then looks ok save your work, or otherwise click the undo-button.

[ame]

using the Paint program is too slow if many pictures need to be resized fast. in some photohosts pictures can be resized upon uploading them (or after uploading). some photohosts may not have this function so something else is needed. the alternative is to resize pictures with some program in the PC before uploading them to a photohost or, of course with no intention of uploading them anywhere).

i found a program in the web which is
a Windows accessory which can resize fairly fast a lot of pictures at a time.
(though it starts rather slowly sometimes...)
it can be found here: http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/releases/view/82827
download the setup program and run it.

for to resize pictures first select them and right-click on them.


in a short while (it takes a few seconds) this window will open:


it is a good idea to select "Only shrink pictures". that way the aspect ratio (the proportions of the picture) will be maintained, i.e. the picture will not be stretched neither in height nor width.
then select "Custom scale 800 pixels" (above the red oval) as it scales the height correctly in away which does not change the proportion of height to width (the so-called aspect ratio).

in the old version of this tool there was an option "Replace the originals". i did not selected this option because this way resizing made copies of the originals. after resizing i have saved the large originals in my PC-folder for best picture quality and used the resized pictures for posting in the forum. after uploading i deleted the resized pictures from my PC to save space.

i'm sure that there are more little programs that do resizing pictures,too, but this is the first which Google gave me. if you find more clever program(s), please write a note here about it.

[ame]

sometimes the question of picture format pops up.
the most common ones are perhaps the png- and jpg or jpeg-formats. i haven't looked up into the depths of their differences but there is one important different: the size of the picture file. the size of a png-picture is about 6 times larger than the size of the same picture in jpg-format. yet there is no difference in the picture quality. if i have understood correct the png-picture reserves space for possible additional data which may be stored with the picture. there is none such data in the web camera pictures which we are taking, so as far as i understand there is no reason why we would need to use the png-format.

the size of the picture files becomes important if one takes and stores a lot of pictures. one will need 6 times more storage both on one's computer and on the photohost. this will mean more bandwidth on the photohost and also more required space here on the LK-server if one posts the pictures here. therefore it is recommended that jpg-format should be used instead of png-format.

the png-format is default format in many programs which we use for taking and manipulating pictures. this default can be changed in the options-selection in some programs (e.g. in VLC) or one needs to select it separately every time (e.g. Paint).

[ame]

I have been using FotoSizer for quite some time on my Windows laptop, and I think it is excellent. Especially if you want to resize a batch of images quickly. http://fotosizer.com/

thank you WildLynx!

[ame]

how to edit a picture so that a detail is brought more clearly in view but also the time stamp can be kept.

the example picture is a Pontu picture which was really big, 1920 pixels wide and 1080 pixels high (the size of the picture file is shown in the bottom line on the right and the pixel size in the middle). the detail is the elk in the middle of this huge picture. if one would just shrink the picture into the allowed size the elk would disappear.

open the picture with Windows Paint and click the 'Select'-tool (orange on the top-left). then select (click-and-drag with the mouse) the time-stamp in the lower left corner (or where-ever the time stamp is). then cut out your selection with ctrl-x. it will be copied in the clip-board.
then select the part of the picture which you want to keep and click 'Crop'. the size of your selection is shown in the bottom on the left.


then paste the time-stamp from the clip-board with ctrl-v. it will be pasted in the top-left corner but you can then move it anywhere you like. save your edited picture with a new name to keep your original picture intact in case you might need it again.


you can also resize your cropped picture before (or after) pasting the time-stamp. the 'Resize'-button is under the 'Crop'-button. remember to keep the aspect ratio of the picture when resizing. otherwise the picture will be stretched in width or height and it will look silly. it is not advisable to use more than about 150 %-enlargement or the picture will become too 'grainy'. a suitable ratio can be found by trying.

[ame]

another way of bringing out a detail in a picture is to zoom the detail out and paste it on the picture.

i have done this by selecting the detail and cutting it out with ctrl-x. the cut-out piece will be copied in the clip-board.
then i open a new document (don't save changes to the original or undo clipping!) then i paste the clipping in the new document with crtl-v and crop it so that only the clipping is left. the i enlarge the clipping. usually it's not good to use more than 150% enlargement, or the picture will become fuzzy.

then i select all the picture (ctrl-a) and either copy (ctrl-c) or cut out (ctrl-x). then i open the original picture and paste the enlarged clipping on it with ctrl-v and move the clipping in a suitable place.
finally i usually frame the enlarged clipping with the detail.


in this example the original picture was so large compared to the allowed maximum size that the time stamp will shrink almost invisible. it might be a good idea to make an enlargement of the time-stamp, too. also the resized detail is not nearly as good in quality as in the previous method.

[Liz01]

Simple and free way to create collages (I found it today) It is good if you want to put together several pictures.

german
https://www.fotocollagen.de/

english
https://www.photocollage.com/

[ame]

also lianaliesma in DD has some nifty program for making collages but i have forgotten what it was.
she often uses it. i think it could also be used for "photoshopping" pictures, i.e. improving them. i'll try to remember to ask her what it was.

thanks Liz!

[lianaliesma]

Hello everyone

I like this site as Photo Editor. Collage Maker. Graphic Designer

https://ipiccy.com/

[Liz01]

Thanks Lianaliesma It is a good program!

My program has the advantage, that you can choose the size of the pictures. I do not have to decide, if I want to combine three, 5 or 10 pictures into a collage. It is without templates.

[ame]

we had some discussion about the size of timestamps. generally they are too small for my ageing eyes, especially now that the sizes of the camera pictures around the time stamps have become large. i have to enlarge the timestamp for to see them. i believe that i don't have the worst sight here so this is probably useful for others, too.

i enlarge the pictures using the Paint-program (like earlier, but the program is slightly different in W-10 now compared to earlier). first i select the part which i want to manipulate. "resize" is on the right side of "select". there i select "percentage" and change the number 100 to 130.
changing only the horizontal or vertical size is enough. in that way the proportions will remain the same.


i made a test picture of a full-size picture and original timestamp and an enlarged timestamp (+130 %, i.e. 1.3 times larger). this is (almost) enough when the original picture ia 1920 px wide and downscaled to 800 px for posting in the forum.
i can see the enlarged text well enough and i hope that others see it, too. the original text is so small that i have to struggle.


if i crop the picture a little then i use either +120 % or +110 %, depending on the size.

[ame]

this is a jay, not an eagle.


in a case like this above when i need almost all the original picture i do the following. i save the original picture and make a copy of it with a new slightly different name. then i begin to manipulate the copy. if i make a mistake at some point of editing i either click "undo" enough many times or start again with the original as the starting point.

first i copy the timestamp. then i crop the picture, i.e. cut the piece which i want to keep. then i paste and enlarge the timestamp and drag it to the lower left corner. then i select and copy the small piece which i want to enlarge, like the jay in the above picture. then i rescale the whole picture to 800 px wide (this is the max size of pictures in the forum). then i paste the detail in its original size and drag it to a suitable place. then, if necessary, i rescale the detail to a suitable larger or sometimes smaller size. that way the original quality or the detail is preserved. in each copy-operation the copied part is saved on the clipboard.

[Liz01]

if you have scaled your monitor, for example, Fastone no longer works properly. It zooms to the screen size. In other words, if you have selected 150% for apps and fonts, everything is unfortunately automatically enlarged to 150% when you take a screenshot. You no longer get what you want.

An excellent alternative is the Greenshot program. It offers an incredible number of options and is a very resource-saving tool. You can not only do screen printing and cutting. You can also label the images and use a counter if needed. I am thrilled! It also runs on Windows 11

the download link- it's a open source software
https://getgreenshot.org/downloads/

and this is a Help Link - English:
https://getgreenshot.org/help/

It is of course free and without advertising.