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mlkpied
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2006 8:22 pm

Don't know where to start

Post by mlkpied »

I have virtually no experience other than shooting pictures with my digital camera, a Canon Powershot 2.1 Megapixels. I am trying to shoot pictures of items for a template. The template needs three images,

Max Size 100k 500k 500k
Pixels 60x60 175x175 400x400

How would I shoot an image and create the three files to load. Is this too simplistic? Am I? Thanks. Michael
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Drahken
Posts: 884
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2005 4:29 pm

Post by Drahken »

So you need to take a picture of (for instance) a chair, then have 3 copies of the photo in different sizes to fit into a template for a website or some such?

Take the photo and put it onto your computer (I'm going to assume you already know how to get that far). Open it in xnview, hit shift+S on the keyboard to bring up the resize dialog (quicker and easier than going through the menus). Now under the screen size section, set it to 500 and 500, and set the resample setting to lanczos. Now click file->save as, choose JPEG, then choose a location and make sure to name your pic somehow so that you know it's the 500x500 one (ie chairpic500.jpg). Check the filesize and see if it's small enough. If not, go back into the save as dialog and click the options button. Uncheck the IPTC and EXIF boxes (EXIF thumbnails inflate the filesize like you wouldn't believe) and/or lower the quality slider. Best results are usually around 75~85. Save it again (overwrite the one that was too big), and recheck the filesize.

Once you get the filesize small enough, hit shift+S again and this time set the screen size to 175x175, repeat the rest of the steaps, making sure to name the pic chairpic175.jpg. Then repeat the process once more, setting the screensize to 60x60 and naming the file chairpic60.jpg. This will leave you with 4 images: The original photo, chairpic500, chairpic175, and chairpic60.



If you need the images to be exactly 500x500 but they insist on being 498x500 or some such, you can uncheck the "keep ratio" box on the resize dialog. This will allow xnview to squeeze the photo a bit to make it exactly 500x500.
Oh the feuhrer, oh the feuhrer, oh the feuhrer's nipples bonk!
mlkpied
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2006 8:22 pm

Missing something

Post by mlkpied »

That worked so I must have asked the wrong question. The original image is 1430x1073X24 and only 71.21 kb to start. What determines the size of the image from the camera? When I change the screen size to 500 and 500 that flattens the image. I guess I'd like to get the correct pixel count but not change the image. Is that possible? Thanks
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Drahken
Posts: 884
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2005 4:29 pm

Post by Drahken »

You mean it squashes the image, like this?:
Image Image

I wondered if that might wind up being a problem. Since your original photo isn't square, you have 3 options:
1) Set the image to 500x375 instead of 500x500 (but it sounds like that option won't work with your template).
2) Force the image to 500x500 (which will leave the pic looking squashed).
3) Crop the image down to a square. This will cut off part of the image, but will allow you to have a 500x500 image without it looking squashed.
To crop the image to a square, open it in xnview, then click edit->set selection ratio and choose 1:1. Now click on the image, and drag, this will create a selection box (which, because you set the ratio to 1:1, will be perfectly square). You can adjust the size of the selection by clicking on one of the squares in it and dragging, and you can move the box around by clicking in the middle of it and dragging. Whatever is within the selection box is what will be in your final image, so adjust it until it's what you want. Now hit ctrl+Y to crop the image (or you can click edit->crop).
Now just follow the steps to resize the image to 500x500, 175x175, 60x60, etc.
Oh the feuhrer, oh the feuhrer, oh the feuhrer's nipples bonk!
Irving
Posts: 83
Joined: Thu May 26, 2005 5:44 am

Re: Missing something

Post by Irving »

mlkpied wrote:That worked so I must have asked the wrong question. The original image is 1430x1073X24 and only 71.21 kb to start. What determines the size of the image from the camera? When I change the screen size to 500 and 500 that flattens the image. I guess I'd like to get the correct pixel count but not change the image. Is that possible? Thanks
As an aside, 72 kb's for an image ain't much. Is it your intention to shoot with such low quality?

The size of the image depends on how you've set the camera. What model are you using?
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