[shipwack]

I've been having trouble with my last couple of submissions, and I'm seeing others suffering from the same thing for this month's contest.

The picture that shows up on the site initially will look really grainy, and the colors won't blend well, either with distinct bands instead of gradual shading, or the pixels will be blocky. This give a bad initial impression.

If you click on the image (to get the larger size), it often will look a bit better, but sometimes in order to get rid of all the artifacts you have to click a third time get the "full size."

Any ideas on what can minimize this? I know(?) that making the image smaller than the max of 1000 pixels will help a bit. Elements has a butt ton of options for ways to save jpegs, though I'm not sure which ones work best.

A second question, if I may. I'll save an image and get it to be less than 200K. Then, when I attach it to my mail client, it reports the image of having a size of over 200K. One attempt for last months contest (a rocket launch) went from being saved at 160 Kb to having a reported size 210 Kb when attached. Which figure should I believe, Elements, or Yahoo/Google?

[Dave]

The Gallery software is setup to show a maximum 800 pixels version in the original window you see, but will include a "view larger" image if beyond this (up to 1000 pixels limit). This is to ensure large shots don't force the thumbnails off the page etc.

So for a 1000 pixel shot, the Gallery software will provide a 800 pixel version in the original window, which may well have lost some detail during compression. The 1000 pixel shot will remain as sharp as you submitted it.

If you are worried people may not click to see the full size shot at 1000 pixel, I would suggest sticking to 800 pixel max.

Re size of shots, if you use "save as" it always adds on extra K for stuff like EXIF data etc. If want to be guarenteed a size use "save for web" option (although you lose EXIF info). If oyu want acurate size info, use your normal windows explorer & right click on file, chossing properties for file size.

Hope this helps

[Angela]

This tutorial that Rob kindly wrote might help as well

[shipwack]

Doh! I should have know that there was one of those there... I had looked in recent posts to avoid duplication, but didn't think of using my search-fu. Thank you both.

[Dabhand16]

Before I got into the swing of re-sizing, some (most) of my shots were awful. (Some say that is still the case). I had pretty much the same problems you describe. The problem was in the way I was re-sizing and compressing the images. I'm sure that Rob's tutorial will be of help.