Resizing Your Images Before Uploading Them to Your XSite
Document 7006
Revised 12/7/2006 AAB


While there's no limit on the file size of the images you place on your XSite, common sense dictates that you keep them as small as possible. This ensures that your web pages load quickly for all users, particularly those on slow connections. There are numerous tools available to help you resize images before you upload them. This document outlines one such tool from Microsoft.

  
 

 

In the age of digital cameras, it's easy to snap photos and upload them to your XSite. But today's multi-megapixel photographs take up multi-megabytes of disk space and can slow your web pages to a crawl. As a rule, you should keep any image on your site below 100K.

     
  Note: When you place images on a web page on your XSite, you can "resize" it by clicking and dragging the corners of the image. However, this does NOT affect the actual file size of the image.  
     

There are two factors which can contribute to the size of an image: dimensions and pixel depth. There are a number of applications available to help you edit the dimensions of your photos. One is mentioned below. However, if you intend to use a number of images on your site, you'll be better served to use one of the more comprehensive image editing utilities, as they provide additional capabilities, such as cropping, image enhancement and color depth adjustment.

Most digital cameras come with some kind of image editing software, so you may already own a suitable application. If not, some examples include:

Free Tools Premium Tools
     
  Hint: Rather than editing photos on your computer, you may be able to save time by changing the default settings on your camera. That way, the files it creates are already small, and may not need further editing. Consult your camera's User Guide for details on limiting the size of your pictures.  
     

Microsoft Image Resizer

This handy utility - part of Microsoft's Power Toys collection - lets you quickly resize one or several images with just a couple of clicks, without affecting the original source files. To get the Image Resizer:

  1. Click Here, or point your browser to Microsoft's PowerToys for Windows XP home page:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

  1. Scroll down and click the link for Image Resizer on the right side of the screen. Follow the instructions to install that application.
  2. Once the Image Resizer has been installed, open any directory on your system containing images. Select one or several image files, then right-click and select Resize Pictures from the pop-up menu.

  1. Select the Custom option, then type the desired dimensions for your image in the text boxes, width first, then height.
         
      Hint: If you enter a 0 in the second box (height), the program resizes the image to the width you specified, and calculates the height based on the original dimensions of your image. This ensures that your image maintains its aspect ratio and won't appear stretched or compressed.  
         
  1. Make sure the Resize the original pictures box it NOT checked, so your source files won't be affected.
  2. Click OK and the tool automatically resizes your images and saves them with the original file name, with (Small) added, For instance, if you picture was named house.jpg the tool would name the file house (Small).jpg. Now, just use these smaller images on your website.