Resizing images

What is a simple way I can reduce the size of an image from say 1.5MB to less than 100KB. The images my camera takes are all over 1MB and I want much smaller images. IPhoto lets me reduce the size but only if I want to send the image as an email. I don't necessarily want to do this. I just want to save and view the images in smaller size files. The Edit icon does not help.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Posted on Oct 22, 2008 5:48 PM

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2 replies

Oct 22, 2008 6:13 PM in response to caseydunbar

Casey

Welcome to the Apple user discussion forums

You can not - you can reduce them before you import them or you can export them making them smaller when you export, delete them in iPhoto and reimport the smaller versions

BUT you now are very limited on what you can do with them - no quality prints for example - disk storage is very cheap - I suggest adding disk - either a second internal drive or an external drive - if you need to you can run your iPhoto library on the external drive

LN

Oct 22, 2008 6:46 PM in response to caseydunbar

Hi, Casey. If you only want to save tiny, 100K versions of your photos, just set your camera for a very low resolution like 640 x 480 or 800 x 600 (the setting will be somewhere in its menu system) and a medium-to-high quality level, and shoot tiny pictures to begin with. They'll be fine if you never want to print them, just view them on your computer screen or upload them to a web site. If you have some reason to want to save pictures as good as your camera is capable of, you'll have to live with iPhoto's most valuable and unvarying feature: always storing your original images exactly as they came from the camera — at whatever file size the camera records them.

For 1MB+ images that you've already imported into iPhoto and that aren't saved anywhere else, the only way to make them take up less storage space is to select them, choose "Export..." from iPhoto's File menu, set their pixel dimensions to something much smaller than the original (you can experiment with different settings to see what gives you the file size you're after), and then click the Export button to save a reduced-size copy of each picture on the desktop or in a folder on the desktop. When you've got them all exported and collected, use iPhoto's Import command to bring the small versions into your iPhoto Library. If you're happy with them and don't want to save the full-resolution versions that you originally imported, click the Library item in the source list so your entire library is displayed, then drag the larger version of each picture to iPhoto's Trash and empty it. Then go back to the folder of exported images on your desktop and drag that the the Trash in your Dock and empty it. You now have only the small, low-resolution versions stored in your iPhoto Library, you've regained some hard drive space, and the image quality for which you paid a large part of the price of your camera has been discarded forever. This is tantamount to trading your expensive, multi-megapixel camera even-up for a $25 disposable toy, but if it's what you want, go ahead.

Message was edited by: eww

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Resizing images

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