Lizzie Anne Designs Forums / Lizzie Anne Designs Forums / Stamps, Tools and Tutorials

Tutorial: How to adjust the size of your photos for upload

Lizzie — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:36:16 GMT

Hi everyone,

Adjusting photo sizes is a question I get asked about a lot, so I thought I'd walk you through the steps right here!

Note: This is how you resize a photo in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Other programs are very similar however and these tips should be helpful for just about any photo imaging program you have.

Note: Most digital cameras take photos that are much bigger than needed for uploading to the web. You should always resize any photo intended to be viewed online. If you are going to print your photo, then you will need it to be a much larger file...I will include instructions on how to do both!

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Resizing digital photos for the web (our sketchbook, blogs, online galleries, forums, etc.)

Bring your photo into your application (Photoshop.) You can do this many ways. The way I prefer to do it is by using the Open command and then browsing for my memory card.
Go to Image > Image Size to bring up the adjust image size window
There are two size measurements that you need to check in the adjust image size window, document size and also dpi. Document size, or Pixel size, are the same thing. Pixels refer to how many "dots" make up a picture. This is a term a lot of graphic designers use, but you may be more familiar with document size. When choosing either Pixel size or document size, I suggest keeping your picts 400 pixels wide or less, *or* no more than 5.5 inches wide.
The other size you need to look at is dpi, or dots per inch. For the web, dots per inch only need to be 72 dpi. A lot of digital cameras bring in your photos at 72 dpi automatically, but make sure to check this setting.
When you start adjusting the document/pixel size and the dpi, sometimes they counteract each other. To make sure the dpi stays the same as you are adjusting the document/pixel size, make sure that all the Scale Size/ Resample Image / Constrain Proportion boxes are checked. This will keep everything in proportion.
When I resize a photo for the web, I almost always make it 400 pixels wide (or about 5.5 inches wide) and 72 dpi. I've seen people go from 300-500 pixels wide.
Saving your document for the web: Once you have adjusted the size of your photo, you will need to save it as jpg. I recommend choosing Save > Save for Web & Devices for this. It will bring up a window that lets you choose to make your photo a .jpg, and then you can use a slider that adjusts the image quality and file size. If you are trying to cut down on filesize, this is a great way to do this because you can use the slider to see how low you can go before you loose image quality. I almost always keep my slider at 60, and I check the "optimized" checkbox. You can see the size of your photo in the bottom left-hand corner (and you'll see it go up or down depending on where you have your slider.)

Resizing digital photos for print (photos you will be making prints of for scrapbooking, etc.)

When saving your photos for printing, you should still resize them (as most digital cameras take photos way larger than they need to be.) The biggest difference between saving for the web and for print is dpi (dots per inch.) When you view a photo on the web, the number of dots per inch doesn't need to be very high in order to see detail...in fact, your monitors won't allow for anything higher than 72dpi. Print is different. To achieve a good quality photo in print, you should make your photo at least 300dpi.
Follow the directions above, but when you have the adjust size window open, make your image 300dpi instead of 72dpi. This is where using the document size rather than pixel size may come in handy as well. If you want a typical 4x6 photo, you can adjust for that size here. You can also use the Image > Canvas Size tool to crop in or adjust the size/shape of your photo.

I hope this helps!

Uploading your samples to the Customer Gallery!

Lizzie — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:58:18 GMT

Hi everyone,

If you would like to upload your cards to our Customer Gallery, first go to the Sketchbook area of our website. You will see The Customer Gallery area. Once you are in the Customer Gallery area, you will need to first choose a category. Inside each category you will see a button with purple "upload" arrows. Just click on the upload arrows and a pop-up will appear. This is where you can browse for your photos.

Also see the post below about resizing your photos. If they are above a certain size, they will not upload.

Your samples will not be published right away. We need to approve them before they can be seen in the Sketchbook. We check for new uploads frequently, but if you want to make sure we see your upload you can call it out in the forum!

Thanks!!!

New Tools and Techniques Forum

Lizzie — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:16:43 GMT

Hi everyone,

I've added a tools and Techniques section to our forum so we can easily refer to these posts when we need them...I find myself looking for these posts when I'm making my projects!

Favorite Inks For Coloring with Markers?

Lizzie — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 11:12:31 GMT

Hi everyone,

I've been talking about different inks with my design team a lot lately and thought it would be good to open this one up to the forum too. What inks do you use when you are planning on coloring in images with markers? I've found that some inks work better than others as far as the "bleed" factor goes...

I've been experimenting with Ranger Distress inks this week and am pretty happy with the results. Anyone else?

Stamp suggestions?

Lizzie — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:10:24 GMT

We have often designed a stamp set or a single stamp based on suggestions from our customers. Anything you'd love to see made into a stamp? Let us know here in this thread!

Magnet Card Tutorial

Lizzie — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:40:19 GMT

Hi everyone,

I've posted the instructions for a fun project on my blog, magnet cards. Both a card and a gift at the same time!

>>Instructions are here

If you end up making a magnet card, post it in this thread so we can see it!

Ask your photo editing and Photoshop questions...

Lizzie — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:24:44 GMT

Meridith and I often get asked questions about manipulating your digital photos (for card samples you're uploading to your blogs or galleries, for photos on scrapbooking pages, etc.) As graphic designers, we have been working with Photoshop for about, oh, 15 years ---or since version 1! :) So feel free to use this forum for any digital imaging questions and share any information you may have with everyone as well!

Photography Tips

Zee — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:41:09 GMT

I would love to share a site that I found today - Digital Photography School - I was just about pulling my hair out trying to get a good photo of my cards. It is SO frustrating when you make a beautiful card just so that your camera can make it look naff
Tricia (Lizzie of Lizzie Anne) told me about white balance...as we have different cameras she wasn't able to show me (I'm a visual learning girl) so I searched the internet and found the link above. He/she tells you how to go about getting more true colour into your photos. I tried the 'show your camera a white piece of paper and then take your picture' technique and it turned out much better than my original try with my Ott-lite. You can see the differences on my blog.
I would LOVE to hear about any tips anyone has with digital photography including any websites you like that give advice or tools you use...I am SO close to caving and buying one of those light box set ups but I think if I can figure it out I shouldn't need one.

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Unsharp mask function in Photoshop

Lizzie — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:32:25 GMT

I had a question about this today and thought I'd post it here for everyone.

If you are using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and are trying to sharpen a digital photo or image, you will notice that sometimes your image will appear pixeled after using the Sharpen function. I avoid using this and instead use the Unsharp Mask function. With Unsharp mask, you can choose a percentage of sharpening and watch it sharpen your image in real-time before committing to the change. I rarely go over 30%...I find that is strong enough. Unsharp mask gives you much more control than using regular Sharpen commands.

Favorites

Lizzie — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:13:34 GMT

Talk about your favorite L.A.D. stamps here!