Dearly beloved... we are gathered here today because poor Fairy_Toadmotha died while trying to figure out how to grab still frames from a video. The poor soul did not realize that unless the video format she was using was extremely high resolution (normally devoted to very high-end camcorders) that such still images would have very poor/inadequate resolution. Perhaps too inadequate for most applications. However, if she can still hear me in the afterlife, there are certain inexpensive software that do an OK job of capturing still images from a motion video. R.I.P. (Record in Peace) Toadmotha! Here is a link that might be useful: ASC Capture software

I found the info and will paste at the end of this post but the picture can be pretty big. salbwil just tell us what program you are using to resize and right click on the picture and click properties on the drop down menu and tell us what size it is. Here are the posting instructions from the webmaster at hearth.com: OK, so hereÂs the deal - your member photos (in your member profile) is limited to a small size - about 150 pixels (dots) square. The little Avatar next to your posts is limited to the same or maybe 100 each way..... Regular pictures, like in this forum, can be fairly large - almost full screen (1000 wide by 1000 high) and up to 200KB (200,000 bytes). But, many folks donÂt know the basics of email and web pics - IÂll try to explain. Pictures sent to the web and by email are best at what is called "screen resolution" meaning that they somewhat match the size od the dots on our monitors. For our purposes, this is aout 72 DPI (or dots per inch)..... What the average person needs is an "Image Management Program" and NOT the one that comes with Windows! If you are a PC user, download the free program called Picasa - This will organize and store all the photos on your disk and also allow you to export smaller copies (for web, etc.) and to even fix the photos up a bit! Apple users already have an image management program, iPhoto, which comes with every mac. To prepare web photos in iPhoto, simply select the photo or photos, go to Export (or it might say Share in newer versions) and when the dialog box comes up use the part that says "scale no bigger than" to select what you want the size of the exported photo to be. For purposes of this board, a photo with a width of 400-700 is ideal. Now, with Picasa, it is pretty much the same thing. Select the photo or photos and go to Export to Folder- the box shown in the picture below will come up and then you can select the picture size - say 480 wide as in this example. The other slider will compress the file size so the picture loads faster. In most cases, anything over 50% is good. If you want to learn more about this stuff, dig around on the links at: http://www.hearth.com/hcc/ - these are links from a course I teach at night school. If you are a user of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, use the "Image Size" dialog bx to convert your photo to 72 DPI and approx. 400-600 pixels wide (the height will work out automatically) - then use "Save for Web" and tryjpg "medium", file size should be really small. Of course, donÂt save changes to the original picture since you still want that big on your computer and for yourarhiving and storage.

I use Photoshop CS2 exclusively now, waited for years for it. I bought 2, one for myself and one for my gdaughter for $299 each from Adobe, WACOM had a promo w/my tablet and I used my Elements that came w/my cam to give to my gdaughter so she could keep upgrading. But starting with Elements is good. They may have more specials when you want the full power of Photoshop and where you can upgrade at the cheaper price. I started with Paint Shop Pro which is cheap, but Photoshop is what most of the pros use, the industry standard. I've read that Picasa isn't too bad, but somebody keeps sending me their photos from their website, and the quality is not too good, I don't know if it's because she doesn't know how to use the camera properly or Picasa resizes and compresses them too much.

I use Irfanview alot with quite a few added plugins, some free (Xero Graphics, Filter Forge,Virtual Photograher by Optik Verve)some paid for (such as TopazLabs plugins, some compatible PS plugins) something a little beyond basic editing...The only thing I don't like about it is it doesn't keep your EXIF data when you save RAW to JPG's. As mentioned above-Photoscape is a nice Free little program, it recognizes raw files but when you bring them up in photoscape they are small...Most of the time I shoot jpg, but have been doing alot of raw's lately... Paint.net is another free-doesn't recognize raw files-I use that to clone out any dust from the sensor if it shows up or some small thing...I'm not that great otherwise for heavy duty into editing-like layers, cuts, so on...it does have that capability... I do have Capture NX that came with the Nikon I bought a few years ago...If the pics are shot in raw and I want to save the exif-I'll open with Irfanview as my viewer-then choose open with NX. that saves the exif when saved...I don't care for the viewer of NX-seems cumbersome for me-thats why I like Irfanview as my viewer... I know this an older post-When I started photography it took me awhile to understand everything on what to get or to buy..So I hope this was helpful. Juanita