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.

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.

Microsoft drops Digital Image Suite I not sure exactly what you are trying to do. I'm thinking you could find your pictures in Kodak EasyShare, click Edit\Select All, right click a photo\copy, then go find My Documents\My Pictures and paste them. At least you would know the photos are in My Photos. You don't need EasyShare to transfer photos from camera to computer. Most advise against installing software that comes with a camera. Once you get all the photos removed from Kodak EasyShare, you can go to the control panel and remove the program. PhotoBucket is just an online place to store photos. Don't know what the zig-zag is, and have no idea about a window that says to restore them or whatever or the little picture of a "lost" one. Anyway, I think you're going to need to learn how to transfer photos from camera to computer (if this is what you're trying to do) without using third party software, because they'll save them in hard to find places.

LOL @fori! So glad my angst is providing inspiration for someone. Seriously! At the least, "Don'ts" provide cautionary tales for people to learn from. Sometimes even in fairytale form. :) Yes, my aunt's place is in Florida, so palms are a bit more suited there. It is interesting to note, though, that her palms are actually potted out on her patio, not in the ground. I wish I had current pics of the backyard, but oh well. It gives the idea, just think cedar wood tones instead of redwood and orange. Add an arbor and a big yellow structure. You are almost there. lol I did some checking earlier on code for outlet heights and spacing, but I think I might have just looked at national code. I suppose I should add that to my list of things to confirm pre-header. Gads, this is so backwards! *swoon* My original designs were going for that tall wall of storage with fridge, pantry and perhaps a microwave in the mix, but the dimensions ended up being really tight AND it made working with that corner of the L even more tricky. I really do love that look and envy those of you who are lucky enough to have it. I'm just not sure it's made for people with small kitchens like mine! It means having all of those other appliances crammed on one wall - or going back to a sink or stove on the small island. And now that we are looking more and more at having the fridge or the pantry on the far left of the exterior run and I'm open to putting in pantry in the DR area, I'm just not sure it's the way to go. I do like the stove having its own wall and how the latest options do open up the L with counter space. There's so many ways to go here. Hopefully that means I'll be happy with the option we eventually choose. It is just so incredibly difficult to lock in on the BS window location and height with all of these unknowns. I keep telling myself that pushing it into that corner will not lock me in and I'll have lots of options left if I want to tweak. Right now, it's the BS window height that is giving me fits. How the heck I can lock in on that when we don't even have any material decisions made, I don't know. This is dicier than I think is prudent, but I can't seem to stop this train. That window is going in. Soon. And I'm going to need luck + clarity or magic blue pills. I have these images of me being back 3 months from now, posting to GW about how the heck to make (fill in the blank) work given the window. :D