Canon SD550 question about resolutions and sizing

Mike Milillo · 02-07-2008, 08:33 PM

Hello everybody. I just started getting into using a digital camera. I have a canon SD550. I figured I would transfer my pictures to my PC often so I wouldn't mind using the highest resolution possible even though it took up more space on the card. The problem is, when I click the pictures on my PC they are huge and are about 3mb each. So, now I started using the lowest resolution and they are sized nicely when opening.

Is there a way to take my old pictures and re-size them after the fact?

I assume the resolution settings determine how big the pictures are, right?

what is the fine, superfine, etc settings?

thanks

**HTF Ads**

Scott Merryfield · 02-07-2008, 08:51 PM

How are you viewing the images on your PC? With the proper viewer, you should be able to size the window so you can see the entire photo to fit your screen without reducing the resolution of the image file. I know that the Zoombrowser viewer that comes free with Canon cameras does this automatically.

Personally, I always shoot at my camera's highest resolution setting if I am shooting jpegs (it's irrelevant when shooting RAW). Why throw away resolution when storage is so cheap? You can always downsize the photo later if you either want to post on the web or email photos to someone.

Mike Milillo · 02-07-2008, 08:55 PM

I am opening these pictures using windows, not any program in particular. When I try to send a picture it is huge in the email is is like 3 megs, instead of 50k or so like they are when I use the lowest resolution.

How does one make the pictures smaller after the fact?

John Dirk · 02-07-2008, 08:55 PM

Mike;

You should have no trouble doing this but you will need the appropriate software. There are plenty of shareware solutions that are cheap or free. One of my favorites is Graphics Workshop Pro. You didn't state what format you saved your files in. JPG is the most common for PC's and is suitable for emailing photos or posting them online.

Since your photos have already been created in the higher resolution, saving them as smaller JPG's will involve some loss of detail, but it shouldn't be too big of a deal unless you are planning to print large copies [8x10 or larger].

The settings you mentioned [fine, superfine etc] sound like resolution adjustments proprietary to your particular camera brand.

Hope this helps

John

Mike Milillo · 02-07-2008, 09:45 PM

great, thank you. They are jpgs.

Scott Merryfield · 02-08-2008, 07:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike Milillo

I am opening these pictures using windows, not any program in particular. When I try to send a picture it is huge in the email is is like 3 megs, instead of 50k or so like they are when I use the lowest resolution.

How does one make the pictures smaller after the fact?

Mike,

I would suggest trying the Zoombrowser application that came with your Canon camera. There is a built-in feature for downsizing images for email transmission. It does not alter the original file, but creates a smaller version for email attachment (and automatically launches your email program).

Don Solosan · 02-08-2008, 12:46 PM

Sooner or later, you're going to want to print a shot, or make wallpaper for your computer, or something, and then you'd be out of luck if all you have is a 50k file.

Maybe you want to step down from the highest quality if storing a lot of pictures is a problem, but not the lowest.

I have a 5 megapixel camera, and on the Fine setting I end up with files in the 1 to 1.5 meg range. These have enough quality for 8x10 prints, and desktops on my computer.

Good luck!

Man-Fai Wong · 02-08-2008, 02:34 PM

The fine, superfine, etc. setting is for JPEG (lossy) compression quality and impacts file size accordingly. As Don noted, I'd suggest going w/ either fine or superfine, if you want good quality prints (particularly enlargements) at some point.

Shoot in max resolution w/ fine or superfine quality setting. Then, if you really must save space and such when you transfer to PC, do a quick run-through of the pics and bin the obviously bad ones while maybe choosing to downsize the ones that you obviously won't need to enlarge for print at some point. If you do that, you might also want to take care to note whether pics could become more worthy after a reasonable crop. Also, sometimes, you may even find that cropping down to just a small part of the pic could be useful though such a severe crop would obviously lack the resolution needed for a good large print.

BUT if archival storage space is not a real problem, then keep the pics in original highest quality sizes and only bin the obviously bad ones.

As for basic viewing and very rudimentary edits (for resizing to email and such) in Windoze,

if you're running XP, you should be able to just use the default Windoze viewer for browsing and then click on the little edit icon towards the right end of the bottom tool bar (between the save-as icon and the help icon) -- OR you can just right click -> Edit. That will bring up MS Paint for the editing although you can probably change that. Just make sure you don't overwrite the original file when you resave it.

_Man_

Mike Milillo · 02-09-2008, 09:25 PM

thanks for all the replies. Storage on my own PC or my camera is not a problem, so maybe like the above poster stated. I will shoot everything the highest quality, but down size them for emails. This way, I will always have the highest quality print capable copy for myself.

I will mess around with this and see how it works.

thanks

Mike Milillo · 02-09-2008, 10:54 PM

I have messing around with Irfanview today. It seems to do what I need. thanks for the suggestions everybody.

quick question. My parents have Vista on their laptop and I downloaded a bunch of pictures into it and within the folders it sorted them automatically into dated subfolders based on when the pics were taken. Can this be done with XP?

Also, is there a way to make the pictures in a folder automatically take on the name of the folder with a number after it.
ex. the folder is called "Vegas", and if I put 10 pics in in, is there a way to make the pics automatically be called "Vegas1" through "Vegas10", or something along those lines

thanks

Scott Merryfield · 02-10-2008, 08:19 AM

Quote:

quick question. My parents have Vista on their laptop and I downloaded a bunch of pictures into it and within the folders it sorted them automatically into dated subfolders based on when the pics were taken. Can this be done with XP?

I'm not sure about within native XP, but the Adobe picture downloader that comes with Photoshop Elements allows you to place photos into subfolders based on the date shot.

Allan Jayne · 02-14-2008, 07:40 AM

If you use Internet Explorer to view your JPG images (does not have to be dialed into the Internet at the time), and you had selected "Enable Image Resizing" from the I.E. Tools, Internet Options box, then the pictures will be resized on the spot for opening and viewing purposes although not resized as JPG files. So you can keep shooting at maximum resolution.

There have even been times when I did "Print Screen" to capture a so-resized picture for non-critical uses such as when selling on eBay. Then save it using a paint program such as pbrush.exe. This is "kinda" crude since the picture saves as a BMP and has to be changed back to JPG or GIF (I have something called LVIEW to do this) before being emailed.

Digital camera hints: Digital Camera Technicalia Made Easy