Change the Size of an Image in KB
When uploading a picture, you may occasionally get a message telling to you to resize it. This may mean decreasing or increasing the image size in KB. If you don't do it right, however, the quality may suffer, leaving you with a fuzzy or pixelated image. Luckily, there are lots of ways to change the size of an image without affecting the quality.
Contents
Steps
Decreasing Image Size
- Compress the image using image editing software. One of the quickest ways to reduce the file size of an image is to compress it into a different format. Open your file in an image editing program (even Paint will work) and save it as a compressed file type. The most common form of image compression is JPG.
- JPG will result in a smaller file but with a noticeable drop in quality. Many image editing programs such as Photoshop will allow you to choose the quality of the JPG. The lower the quality, the smaller the file size.
- Each time you re-compress a JPG image, it will lose quality.
- There are a variety of programs and online services that will compress images without you needing to install a full-blown image editing suite.
- Resize the image. Open the image in an image editing program. Paint will work, though you can use more advanced programs such as Photoshop. Once the image is loaded, select Resize ( or Image Size) from the Image menu. This will open the Image Size window.
- Ensure that you maintain your image’s aspect ratio by checking the appropriate box.
- Select the Percentage option and begin reducing your images by a small amount. For example, Replace “100” with “90” to reduce the image by 10%. Repeat until the image is the size you want.
- As the image gets smaller, the quality will decrease. This will become especially apparent if you try to enlarge the image back to its original size.
- Compress the image using Microsoft Office. You will need Office 2010 or earlier to do this (the feature was removed for Office 2013). Open the image using Microsoft Office 2010 Picture Manager. Click the Picture menu and select Compress Pictures. Choose your compression from the list of options in the right frame:
- “Documents” will shrink the image slightly, and is designed for including an image in a Word document. “Web pages” will shrink the image more and result in a smaller file than “Documents”. “E-mail messages” will reduce the image the most, and will result in the smallest file size. The image will be noticeable smaller.
- All three options will change the actual size (pixels) of the image as well as the file size.
Increasing Image Size
- Open the image in an image editing program, such as Photoshop. Increasing the size of the actual image will always result in loss of quality and increased pixelation. There is no way to increase the size of a JPG, PNG, or BMP image without losing quality.
- Open the Image Size tool. This is typically located in the Image menu of your editing program. A window will open showing the current size of the image.
- Check the Constrain Proportions box. This will keep the length and width the same relative to each other, keeping the aspect ratio of your image intact. Also check the Resample box, which will add more pixels in an attempt to keep the picture clear.
- Change your units from Pixels to Percentage. In the Image Size window, you can adjust the values which are defined by units of measurement. By default, this is set to pixels. Use the dropdown menus to change this to Percentage.
- Increase the size of your image by 10%. You can do this by changing the percentage from 100% to 110%. Click the OK button. The image size will increase slightly, and you will notice an increase in graininess.
- Repeat until the image size is acceptable compared to the loss of quality. At some point, the image will become too grainy to be used, and you won’t be able to make it any larger without looking worse. Experiment with your image until you find an acceptable balance between size and quality.
Increasing Image Size (Windows 7)
- Navigate to image that you want to increase in size. You will be adding text information to the file in order to increase its size on the disk. This method only works for JPG files, and will not work for PNG files.
- Adding text to the image file will not affect the quality of the image.
- Right click the Image and click Properties.
- Click On Details Tab.
- Type anything in the fields that you can edit. These may include Title, Subject, Tags, Comments, Authors, and more. The more text that you add, the larger that the file will become.
- Click on Apply. The new text will be saved to the image and you can see the new size in the General tab. It should have increased by several KB.
