Having a website designed is only the first part of the process.  Managing it and adding content, pictures and video can be a daunting, but necessary task in taking your website to the next level.  Oftentimes, adding pictures can be the hardest part of this task.  I recommend a simple, yet effective software program called PhotoPlus for my clients to easily be able to do this.  The program costs about $80 and is available from Serif.com here.

To resize images using PhotoPlus follow the steps below:

1.  Open up an image by going to “File” and then “Open,” find it on your computer and open it.

2.  Look at the picture size in pixels and decide what size you want the picture.

3.  You have two ways to resize photos, image size and canvas size.  Both of these are found underneath the “Image” menu.  Image size will change the overall size of the photo and canvas size will change the proportion of the photo.  For example,  let’s pretend for the sake of this example that we open up a picture that is 700px by 700px, and we want to resize the photo to 588px by 250px.  We will want to resize the image first to 588px by 588px and then we will want to shrink the canvas height from 588px to 250px thereby turning a square picture into a rectangle.

4.  To change image size simply click on “Image” and then “Image size.”  Change the width of the photo from 700px to 588 px and the height will automatically change to 588px as well.  Hit “OK.”

5.  Whenever we shrink a picture we want to put an “unsharp mask” on the picture to crisp it up.  We do this by going to “Effects” then “Sharpen” and finally “Unsharp mask.”  Adjust the sliders to where you want them and select “OK.”

6.  Now we need to change the canvas size.  First we’re going to go over to the bottom right of our screen and look at our layers.  We should see one layer that says “Background.”  We want to right click on this layer and select “Promote to Layer.”  Now we can move this layer around which we will discuss later.

7.  Go now to “Image” and then “Canvas Size” and change the height from 700px to 250px and select “OK.”

8.  We have now changed our square picture to a rectangle.  However, it may not look quite right because of the way it was cropped.  Here’s where our layers come in….

9.  On the left hand side look for the move tool and using your arrow keys move the picture up or down until it looks right.

10.  Finally, go to “File” and then “Export Optimizer.”  Move the “Quality” slider up and down and view the picture on the left.  You want to use the lowest possible quality while still having the picture look good as this will make your file smaller in size.  Finally click “Export” and save your picture.