Newbie needs help Sizing photos for posting

What's the best way to size photos for posting without loosing resolution? I haven't been able to get one down below the 100kb limit rquired for this forum. I only have the standard Canon software so far (waiting for Photoelements 6).

You really need some image editing software like elements or photoshop etc. Are you shooting RAW or jpeg Gary? There are a couple of ways to reduce the image - in either Elements or Photoshop. I don't use elements, so I'm not sure of the shortcut keys etc, but I will make a (hopefully correct) presumption that the shortcut keys are the same for Photoshop and elements

The alt plus I keys will bring up the image resize palette. The first thing that you want to do is to resize the image, to the longest side being 800 pixels. if elements has it, use 'bicubic sharper' as the resizing method. Usually, by doing this, you'll lose some resolution/sharpness, so I (and many others) usually apply a small amount of USM to sharpen the smaller sized image a bit. After doing this, you can save the file, either via using the save for web function, or making sure the image is an 8 bit image* and then going file > save as, selecting the file type as jpeg and moving the slider to keep it under 100kb. I find save for web easier, but it strips the EXIF.

*Tiff files are 16 bit, whilst jpegs are 8 bit. If you're shooting tiff files, then convert it from 16 bit to 8 bit first if you want to use the file > save as option. You can convert it (in Photoshop) by going to the image menu, then mode, then select 8 bit.

Hope this helps!

Dave

Thanks Dave. Guess I'll have to wait till the new software arrives. Hopefully, it won't be too much longer. I'll print your comments for now.