How To Resize and Crop a Picture with Windows Photo Editor
You don’t need a complicated photo editing program to prepare images to post on your website. Windows comes with Photo Gallery which makes it easy to quickly trim a photo to the desired dimensions and save it at an appropriate size for use on your website.
Requirements: Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8
1. Open Windows Photo Gallery
Click the 'Start' button on the home screen of your computer and type ‘photo gallery’ into the search bar. Photo Gallery should appear in the list of programs. Click the link to open Photo Gallery. (Do you have Windows Vista or Windows 7, but do not see Photo Gallery? Download it free here.)
2. Choose a Photo to Edit
When you first open Photo Gallery, you will see a directory of all the pictures on your computer. Find the photo you’d like to edit and double-click to go into Edit mode.
Optional: Save a Copy
If you wish to keep a copy of the original image without any edits, click the 'Make a Copy' icon. This allows you to create a copy of the image to edit.
3. Crop the Photo
Click the 'Crop' icon in the tool bar. When the crop grid appears, drag the sides and corners until the picture is framed how you want it. You can click and hold in the middle of the crop frame to move the frame around over the picture.
Hit the 'Enter' button to apply the crop.
4. Edit the Crop
If you click the 'Crop' icon again, it will allow you to edit the crop. You can also use the blue 'Undo' and 'Redo' buttons at the top of the toolbar.
5. Resizing
Large images slow down page load times, so it’s important to resize images before uploading them to SiteViz. After an image is cropped, you can resize it.
Click the 'Properties' icon and select 'Resize.'
Under 'Select a Size' choose 'Custom.'
The 'Maximum Dimensions' field defines the length of the image’s longest side. If my image is supposed to be 600 pixels wide by 350 pixels tall, I would enter 600.
Be sure to use ‘Browse…’ to save the resized picture in a convenient place.
How big is too big?
Your Project Manager or the Global Reach Support Team can advise you on useful dimensions for a specific context. In general, there is little need for images displayed in web pages to be more than 800 pixels wide, which is the general pixel width of most interior page content areas. Images used in backgrounds could be as big as 1500 pixels wide, and some image rotators need images at about 960 pixels wide. Each case is different.
Other Resources
Don’t have access to Windows Photo Gallery? Crop photos online with these free resources: