Resizing images is something many of of take for granted, but with the popularity of cheap digital cameras, I’m still asked on a regular basis; “how do you resize images?”.

There really isn’t much to resizing images for non-professional use. You just need a program that can do the resizing for you, and a little basic knowledge on how to do it. In this tutorial we’re going to use a little free lightweight program called Irfanview. In fact Irfanview has been around for many years, I have been using it myself for over ten years. If you are one of the unfortunate people that have never tried this little program I highly recommend it. You can find it at http://www.irfanview.com. If you don’t have it and don’t want to have to deal with another program, you can still use the software that came with your digital camera, cell phone, or maybe even your printer, however it must be able to handle resizing.

1. Start Irfanview and open your picture:

for this tutorial I’ll be using a little drawing I did for a friend in Illustrator some years ago.

2. Once your image is open, go to the “Image” menu at the top and select “resize/resample”.

you will see a dialog like the one in the picture below.

Lets look at the controls on the left side. In the first block you will see your current image size. Under that you will see two boxes that will allow you to set the width and height of your image, and by what increments you wish to use. Notice that if you change either of the sizes the other size will change also. Irfanview by default preserves the aspect of your drawing. I would recommend leaving this alone unless your sure you want to change the aspect of your image. You can also set the drawing size by percentage by selecting the radio button in the corner of the third block. The final block on the left side allows you to turn off the aspect ratio lock, and apply a resharpen filter after resizing. The last input box on the left side allows you to set the “dots per inch value”.

Now for the two boxes on the right. The top two buttons are shortcuts to allow you to half or double your image file on the fly. Under them there is a list of typical screen and image sizes to select from including the size of your desktop. In the far bottom right box we have our resample settings.

3. Set your options:

For this tutorial I’m going to use the size input boxes to make my image 250 pixels wide preserving my aspect ratio. I’m going to leave my DPI at 72 because that’s the default DPI on most peoples desktop. Since this is a vector drawing I want to select the “Apply sharpen after Resample” radio button to save me the time having to sharpen the image after I resize it. I’m going to ignore all the other controls but the resample settings, where I’m going to select the highest quality setting. Since this drawing is small, there should be no issues here. After I’m happy I’ll simply hit OK.

After a moment or two (depending on the size of your image and the filter you use) you’ll see the fruits of your labor in the Irfanview window. If you don’t like what you see simple select “Edit -> Undo” from the main menu to return your image to normal to try again.

4. “Save As” your image:

Once your image is finished, select the “File -> Save As” menu item. Not the “Save” item. If you select “Save” you will overwrite your original image file and it will be forever erased. So be careful. In the “Save As” dialog browse to where you want to save the file, type in the name you would like to use, an then select the the file type you would like to use. I prefer “.png”, “gif”, or “.jpg” formats depending on what I’m doing. You might want to try all three to see if you get the quality and file size required for what your doing. I should note that there is an advanced settings radio button at the bottom that will allow you to set even more options on the format of your preference. Trying to explain the differences in them will only make things even more complicated, and will not help you much in the end so it’s outside the scope of this tutorial. Seeing is believing after all.

Here is my final image after the resize:

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Next time I’ll show you how to make slideshow videos with irfanview.