Anyone that's taken an image with a digital camera will know that when you get the picture on your computer that they're generally huge in both file size and dimensions. It can be frustrating to manage such large file sizes as it can really tax your RAM and the huge dimensions take up the whole screen, making the pictures extremely difficult to work with. In this article I will give you some useful tips on how to reduce these images down to more manageable sizes using Photoshop Elements 4.0 in OS X for Apple Macs.



The first step is to open the image in Photoshop. You can right click and then open-as if you've set up your mouse to have two buttons or if not you can ctrl-click the image and then select to open in Photoshop.

With the image open in Photoshop the first thing to do is reduce the physical size of the image. People don't often think about it but it can really help with the file size as well. To do this just go to the menu at the top of your screen and select the image drop down menu. You'll then want to go to the resize option and then select resize image, not resize canvas.

You'll be given an option box that allows you to change your image size. If it's straight off a camera then it is most likely between 2000 and 5000 pixels wide, which is substantially larger than your monitor can display. In the width box select a reasonable size, usually around 1000 pixels to preserve quality. Make sure that the constrain proportions box is ticked at the bottom, so that the image keeps its proportions. Making sure that pixels are selected as your unit type hit OK and watch as your image is reduced in size. With any luck you won't even notice the difference in quality.

The next step to easily drop the file size is a simple compression as you save the picture. From the menu at the top select File and then Save for Web. Your screen will change to a split mode where you can see two versions of your picture. On the left is the original uncompressed version and on the right is the compressed version that you'll be saving. On the top right corner there are a few options to select, the one you're looking for is the quality box. Clicking this will give you a slider where you can select the quality of the image you're saving. The lower the quality the lower the file size, however you won't want to go too low as the picture will become distorted. Find a setting that gives you the lowest file size but while keeping the detail in your image. When you're satisfied click OK and save the image.

Hopefully these tips will help out on your hard disk space and on your memory. It'll make viewing images much smoother and will make you life much easier. You can also use this knowledge to compress images for uploading to websites and publishing on the web.