I have a mac and I am a computer idiot.
I know nothing about pixels, dixels and computer technology but I have figured out how to compress my photographs.

I use Appleworks DRAWING . - comes prepackage in your mac.
Insert photo into the Drawing program.
Click on ARRANGE in the bar thats at the top of the screen ( I'm so clueless I don't even know what that bar is called )
Under the Arrange heading you can resize your photo by percentage.
Save your image in jpg. form.

I can compress a photo down to fit on the image gallery and they only allow something like 60 bytes size.

When I first started fiddling around with photos and posting them I was told about a free compression software called infra something.

I checked it out but it wasn't compatible with my old mac computer .

don't know if this helps or not, but it's how I have been shrinking my 1600 x 1400 photos down to less than 60 bytes.
The quality dimishes though.

After spending hours scouring Google, various Mac forums, and receiving a number of helpful suggestions from a variety of people on here and elsewhere, I finally found what appears to be the "perfect" tool. It is free too, which is even better.

For others who may have the same question, the program I found (after trying 16 different proggies over the last several hours) is aptly called "Resize!" and there is a PC and Mac version!

It can be downloaded from http://www.kstudio.net/. It is a very simple application that allows you to convert an individual photo or an entire folder full of photos and all you gotta do is tell it what dimensions you need the photos to be and how highly compressed you want them.

I chose 640X480 and 40% compression and my 1.2 Meg digital images came out averaging 40K each and were really good quality. I used the application for today's (July 17) blog entry photos in fact with zero discernable difference between them and prior photos on my blog so I'm very happy.

Hope this information helps out others needing to resize/resample their gardening photos. It certainly made my day.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Growing South Blog

Thanks for that report, cuz size does matter.
: ~ )

will check out your blog at lunch time.

This might be a convoluted way to do this, but you can use iPhoto, which should come pre-packaged on your Mac. You simply import your photos into iPhoto, very easy, by the way...

Then select the photos you want to publish to you blog in the photo library, and email them to your self. When you email photos, iPhoto asks how you want them sized. You can choose from small(~63kb), medium (~122kb), or large (~400kb).

When you get your email, you will have an attachment containing the photo(s) at the size you requested, and you can use them in your blog.

You may also want to check out the mac.com features. I subscribe, and use it all the time to create very simple temporary web pages with photos for my clients to review. For instance, if I a selecting pots for a job, I go to the supplier and photograph the good candidates. Then, I upload the photos to iPhoto, select them, and click on the "publish web page" button, and it is all automatically uploaded. I then send the link to my client's email address, and they can check out the web page. You can password protect if you want. This saves tremendous amounts of time for me, and it also allows me to communicate a huge number of images without clogging my client's email connection with huge files.

Thanks, Growing South. I'm a MAC gal, too & was glad to find this program.

GreenieBeanie,

I tried the .Mac service and was actually very disappointed in it - but that is a completely personal observation here.

On June 18th I instead registered the domain name http://www.myblogpix.com (aptly named) and use it for hosting all my blog pix on my blogs (I maintain three blogs at present).

For $11.95 a month I have 2 Gig's of storage, 25 Gigs a month in transfer allocated, and can have up to 25 email addresses that will hold 2 Gigs each. It works for me.

I love iPhoto too BTW. It has been my primary means of keeping my photos organized on my Mac. Since I moved to Louisiana on March 15th of this year I've taken over 2,200 photos! Yes, that's a lot, but I figure a digital camera is such a wonderful thing and years from now the photos will still be in pristine condition - no fading, cracking or crumbling. And of course - I make regular backups to DVD to insure I never have to worry about losing my precious photo collection.

A few days ago I started writing a Mac Software blog. I plan to add a brief review and link regularly to some kind of useful Mac application I run across. While some may be commercial (shareware) I am planning to try and cover only freeware applications as a rule of thumb.

I'm finding my passion for gardening and my passion for computing work so well together it's as though that's how it all was meant to be from the get-go.

I am Borg. You will be assimilated...

Here is a link that might be useful: My New Mac Software Blog

trying to post and keep getting sent to disney.com! yarg!

just want to tell you about flickr image hosting!

You can use it for free, and have limited uploading per month, or pay I believe about $25 per yr for 2 gigs per month of uploading but then unlimited storage and bandwidth. Only thing it doesn't seem to have is a way to have prints made...it's really for online use.

You can choose how public/private your photos are. It has a kind of cool organizational interface not unlike iPhoto or other photo organization programs, but online. You can get a mac program for uploading pictures by drag-and-drop, or get an uploader plugin for iPhoto, or upload from their webpage.

Flickr actually resizes your pictures for you also (this will not help if you are concerned about your upload speed as well as your download speed) 4 or 5 different sizes to use on webpages, and it has several blog-specific features. Playing around in the tags and groups is a fun way to see some cool stuff...look for 'transparent screens' for instance.

I pretty much use it to host all my pictures, blog or otherwise...

Here is a link that might be useful: my flickr, for example (warning! random!)

A fine resource is www.macfixitforums.com/.

Another, for hardware performance reports by users is www.xlr8yourmac.com/

Enjoy.

I'd been wondering where to share this tip, and since this thread allows for it, I just have to throw in a plug here, Growing South, for the absolute best piece of Mac software there is: Sticky Brain at chronosnet.com.

It's an immediate, drag & drop filing system which looks just like Mail, & let's you keep a note on anything you're seeing on line which you want later reference to. For example, I have a folder on "Paths", where I save photos from the LD forum thread [& other sources] by simply dragging the photo onto a note, copy & paste any relevant text, etc. Same for my planning research for a garden shed, and saving info & photos on plants in folders for many different categories of plants.

It also has many other features, like keystrokes for saving online purchase receipts, passwords & usernames, etc. I use it every day, all day, to keep visual track of anything I'm researching. It's the best, most fun and pleasurable $40 you can ever spend!!

Karen