Photo Guide

Digital Camera Photos

Pictures on your computer take time to upload to the website depending on the file size, which is measured in kilobytes (KB) or megabytes (MB). Photographs from digital cameras can be a couple of MB in size but may be smaller.

As a general rule, pictures uploaded to the website should be around 200KB or less. We automatically convert & size the image so it loads quickly on the site, so don't worry about that!

For Microsoft Windows users, to find out how big a photo is, get to the folder/directory with the picture in on your computer and look at the size against the name in the 'Details' view; or you can right click on a file and select properties - the file size will display on the dialogue box that appears. The larger the file, the longer it will take for the picture to upload.

If a picture is above 1MB in size it will have to be resized in order to reduce the file size. This is easy. To do this you will have to change the image width & height from within a graphics or photo editing programme such as Photoshop, Corel Photo Paint and PaintShop Pro. You do usually get a program such as this free with your camera. If not, there are many different graphics programs on the market that are cheap to buy, or even free from the web. So read the user manual or help files carefully on how to resize if you think that your photo is too big.

Scanning

If you are scanning a hard-copy photo then adjust the settings to make the file size acceptable. Also don't bother scanning at above 100dpi as monitors cannot display resolutions higher than this.