Imagine the scenario. You are trying to upload a picture to a website but the picture resolution is too high and the size of the file is also too high. So what do you do? Today I will show you how to resize an image using GIMP.
GIMP is an open source picture editing and manipulation tool that can be run on Linux, Windows and OS X. You can take a picture and resize, crop and edit in a thousand different ways to your hearts content. Think open source Photoshop and you would not be far wrong.
For the purpose of this tutorial I will be using the Linux version of GIMP on Linux Mint 12. I will be taking a file that has a resolution of 1440 * 900 and size 1.8Mb and reducing it 800*600 and less than 200Kb.
Open up GIMP and go to File – Open to choose your image. Click on your image and then click open.
So lets sort out the resolution first. Go to Image – Scale Image to get the screenshot below.
Change the Width value to 800 and the Height value to 600 (hence 800*600 resolution) and click Scale.
Now onto the size of the file. Go to File – Save As pick a name and location for your image and then click save. You should then be presented with the box below.
Click the box next to Show preview in image window as this will show you the image size and move the Quality slider left and right until you get the required file size. So mine would look like:
When you have the required file size click Save and voila your image will now have a resolution of 800*600 and be less than 200Kb in size.
About the Author
Hi I am Chris the owner of ComTech. I provide IT Support, Laptop repairs and Computer repairs to both personal and business clients in and around Stirling. For a list of what I can offer you why not visit my website www.comtech247.net where you will find my blog, testimonials, services and much more. Start supporting a local business today so I can start supporting you.
If you found this blog useful then why not sign up to my RSS Feed for news, tutorials, views and general techie stuff!!
So far (I’ve only used it a few times) it looks like you have to Export instead of Save As in GIMP 2.8 if you want to save to anything but the native .xcf file format. This is 2.8 running on Ubuntu 12.04; perhaps other platforms can do different things.