Neil
Photobucket automatically resizes images larger than 250kb. If you'd like them smaller, login to your account, above the picture it says EDIT, click that, it'll have a place that says RESIZE PICTURE, 75% of original, 50% of original, or 25% of original.

Randy

This is one of my pet peeves. Here's how to handle it for all time, all situations (not just Photobucket)

1. Download Irfanview. It is free. It is stupendous, does much of what Photoshop does for $500. www.irfanview.com

2. Install irfanview. You can make it your default viewer (I did) but don't have to, you have a choice.

3. Open your images in Irfanview before doing anything else to them. Resize them to something reasonable, I usually use 800x600 but you have lots of choices. THEN save them to your hard drive with a reasonable name (daisy1.jpg for instance instead of IMG00945.jpg) To resize, go to Image:Resize/resample/ and it will give you choices.

You can use Irfanview to color correct, sharpen, crop, and add some effects. The price it right, NO adware or spyware, this is a GREAT program and all pics should be resized to something smaller before uploading to the web or sending in email.

If you want to print your digital pics as large photos (say 8x10) and want to preserve all your resolution, then save the smaller one under a different name. I have a few pics saved as both "pic1.jpg" and "pic1sm.jpg" etc. The smaller version is used for the web and email.

Thank you, I'll get off the soapbox now!
Leslie

Hear, hear Lezro!

I have used IrfanView (free download) for several years. In fact I prefer it. I learned the basics in an afternoon.

I have Photoshop Elements and occassionaly use it to do some cloning, which IrfanView doesn't provide. It's an excellent program but the learning curve is fairly steep and it is slower. IrfanView bypasses Windows registry which is part of the reason it is so speedy, even with images from a 5 megapixel camera.

When you first open (or drag and drop) your image you will only see a small portion (unless you have changed the default view). I click on the magnifying glass with a minus sign to zoom out to see what to crop. Sometimes what I am wanting is small enuf that resizing isn't necessary so little quality is lost (using 95 compression). I don't remember what the default compression setting (maybe 80). I choose my own depending on the image.

If the cropped image is still too big for the screen click on Image in the menu and choose Resize/Resample, where you can instantly resize to make your image screen size. And of course you lose quality. That's where sharpening is useful.

I have learned Not to fill my camera's LCD screen with the desired image. It loses far too much quality when down-sized and compressed.

I am happy to help anyone with IrfanView. Drop me an email. We all need to learn good photo editing especially for common courtesy on the internet ~~ my soapbox issue.

Thanks for all the great info....now I need a nice rainy week end to just sit at the computer....

Neil