I know everyone wants their drawings to look as good as possible when posted but, to be honest, many of the graphics posted here take forever for a dial-up user like me to load. When there's a large image, I honestly just move on & don't even bother to look at it & that means that I don't usually bother to comment on it either.

I found some good information on resizing graphics for web use and thought I'd pass on the url:

Molly.com/articles/webdesign

I know we don't do web design here but the same principles apply and please remember that there are still areas where dsl, cable & options other than dial-up simply don't exist.

Thanks, J

That's a useful article J-Lynn. You do make a good point in that not everyone is on dsl or cable so graphic images should be as small as possible while still keeping the integrity of the drawing wherever possible.

Thanks for posting.

I disagree with the comment about scanning at 72dpi

This is assuming that the size you scan at is exactly the size you will want for the final outcome, and that you arent going to print it.

I personally scan colour images at 300 dpi, as this is enough resolution to print on high quality laser printers.

If you are enlarging the image, choose a higher dpi, such as 600dpi (if you are scanning slides, scan at 1200)

Also, I personally wouldnt use GIF for line drawings, as even line drawings have slight gradients at the edges of the line, and if u take these away, which GIF would, it looks grainy and stink.

Play it safe and go jpeg.

Use your image program to change the file size accordingly:

If you have photoshop, when you save the copy that you will post onto the internet, go to Image - Image Size, and change the resolution to 72dpi. This is the maximum resolution of computer displays, so its pointless to go any more, as it will just be wasting bytes.

Also, to make your images even smaller, go to File - Save for Web. Make sure you select 4-Up, and select your prefered file type. Now you have the option to select what compression you want (usually jpeg), and check it against the original quality, and 2 other quality settings. Choose the quality that is the lowest you can go without loosing significant detail (it is up to you to decide what is significant).

Nice to know I'm not the last person on earth still stuck on dial-up LOL.

Usually when I scan an image that I have worked on I go to my photoshop program and resize it to where it isn't gonna be to large on the website. I also usually end up cropping out the extra space that isn't needed in the picture that way it take a little less room also. Probably takes away from the pictures but they usually seem alright to me for being scanned. Definately not like the original itself.

Hi All

I use an excellent program - and its free - to resize my scans
My scanner creates files at about 3mb and image resizer reduces that down to 300kbs without much reduction in quality

I.E 2 minutes to load as apposed to 20secs.

Cheers

Maurice

http://www.thejackol.com/2004/10/27/image-resizer/