There are two issues that you have to consider to before posting a picture - its dimensions and its compression ratio.

In order to see a photo here, you have to size it so the whole image can fit on the screen without scrolling. Of course, that depends on the screen resolution of the viewer. I figure most people have at least 1024x768 by now (there are still some people running 800x600). Therefore you want your image to be smaller than 1024x768 in order for it to fit onscreen. I generally try to keep my pictures less than 800 pixels wide for posting.

There are several ways to resize. You can do it in any photo editing program. Either crop out the part you want then save at the size you want or just resize the whole picture. It is an option in the menu of all photo editors.

Once you have cropped/resized down to the size you want, then you have to compress the file as a jpg. It varies from program to program, but when you choose "save as" you will see an option to choose between Max compression and Maximum quality. Max compression gives the smallest files while maximum quality gives the largest file size.
In truth, you can't tell the difference online between a medium quality setting and a high quality setting. If you choose a value that is in the low to midrange for quality you will generally produce an image that is under 150K.

There is no absolute way to calculate how big it will be because the file size depends on how complex the image is. A simple photo of a white snake on a black background will be small whereas a complex patterned animal on a pile of leaves and grass will be larger in size.

So here are three photos cropped to the same size and using the same compression ratio.

This one is 78kb



A slightly more complex background makes this one 124kb


And this one complex habitat shot is 161kb


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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

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