IrfanView help, How to make Filesoup-friendly pictures

This is a little mini-guide thread for users who need help to get their pictures within Filesoup's posting guidelines (640x480, 300kB).

Firstly, you can download IrfanView from http://www.irfanview.com - it's a completely free program so you conscience will be clear

On opening the program, you can go to File -> Thumbnails to open the built in picture browser. This will allow you to preview every picture in a particular folder to pick out which ones you wish to work on.

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The picture browser


Now that you have your picture loaded, the Image menu gives you various options for editing, like enhancing colours, sharpening, and other assorted effects. For the purposes of this guide we are interested in the 'Resize/Resample' option. This will pop up the following window:

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The resize dialogue box


If you are posting a normal landscape image from a digital camera, then choose the options as above - the aspect of the picture should be such that it will resize to exactly 640 x 480, then hit OK.

If your picture has a different aspect, or is taller than it is wide (portrait), then you need to use the 'Set new size' section, and make sure that 'Preserve aspect ratio' is selected...

* For portrait pictures, set the height to 640 and check the width - if it is 480 or less then hit OK, otherwise set the width to 480 and hit OK.
* For landscape pictures, set the width to 640 and check the height - if it is 480 or less then hit OK, otherwise set the height to 480 and hit OK.

After resizing very large images, they can sometimes look slightly blurred. In this case I use the Image -> Sharpen option. Be careful not to overuse this, however, as it can spoil the feel of certain photos. Now you have your image resized to within the acceptable dimensions, it is time to save it...

Go to File -> Save as... and set the file type to 'JPG - JPEG Files' (this is the default). Tick the 'Show options dialog' box and the following window will open:

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'Save as' dialogue box


The above pic shows the settings that I use for posting photos on Filesoup, and I have never had any complaints. Generally, the files produced are 50-100kB in size and the posted pictures are clear with no signs of over-compression The following picture was saved at these settings while I was making this guide, and comes in at a very manageable 65kB in size

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I hope this mini-guide helps some of you, and if there is anything that is unclear then please feel free to PM me and I will try to help to the best of my ability


Happy posting!

Thanks to gr00ved