The size of your photos that you upload to your site is critical. If the file size is large this will
- Slow the loading time when visitors come to your site. Very few blog readers will wait around for images to load.
- Eat up your storage limit if you are using Blogger, WordPress.com, even GoDaddy’s site services (& most free hosting)
- Take longer to upload the images to put on your site.
So how do you resize your pictures?
To answer this question you must understand the difference between pixels and bytes. This won’t be complicated. I’ll tell you only what you need to know.
Pixels: the size on the screen in height and width.
Bytes: file size of the image in how much detail/information is saved in the individual file
After you are done editing your photo in your program of choice, then you export or save the photo. This is when you adjust the pixels and bytes of the saved picture. I use picasa for most of my editing. So I’ll use it as an example. The process should be similar to other editing software.
Generally resizing your photo to 800 pixels is enough adjustment. But if the original photo was very large, say 5mb and up, you will need to reduce the image quality (which just means the file size). To see the file size of the saved picture, right click on it and select “get info” or “properties” or similar. Then make further adjustments to the size as needed.
Basics of Resized Pictures for Websites:
Save photos that are 800 pixels wide or less. If you are going to use it as a smaller image, save with less pixels. When one number is given for the pixels, it applies to the width. The height is auto adjusted.
Save photos at around 150 kb. This will not affect the appearance of the image on a screen. [It will affect the photo if printed]
Find out about photo storage limits in Blogger and WordPress.com. And with this new knowledge of pixels and bytes you should be all set to upload your pictures and not worry about reaching the storage capacity on your site.
Tell Me: Do you have more questions about resizing your pictures?
photo credit: The Farmer’s Life