Herself's Webtools

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ALWAYS, always work on a copy not the original image!

GIMP is free, open source and available for all operating systems.

If you do not have PhotoShop, or even if you do, down load a copy of GIMP. You’ll want to do some basic adjusting of your photos before you put them online. Now with GIMP you can do really cool special effects, you’ll want to download the user manual for that GUM, or wander through some tutorials.

1) The first thing I do on every photo is to adjust the color. Open up a photo in GIMP. Select Tools->Color Tools->Levels.

Tell it to auto adjust the image. If you like what it did, click OK. Most images benefit from this color adjustment. Some dramatically, some only a little. This tool takes the lightest pixel in your image and makes it white, takes the darkest and makes it black and adjusts the others accordingly. This will really sharpen up and clear up photos taken in dark or bright places.

2) Next re-size the image. No one visiting your website wants to download a 2288×1712 image that the browser will resize to 600×400, or what ever size you are displaying. Go to Image->Scale Image and adjust it down to the size you’ll be showing your visitors. There is also Image->Canvas Size. Canvas size crops the image, scale shrinks the full image.

3) Gif, jpg and png are the three formats most widely recognized on the internet. Usually jpg will be smallest, gif next and png will be huge. Png and jpg both allow you to adjust the compression level. Try saving your image at different compression levels. Some images shrink better in different formats depending on the amount of detail in a given picture. Check the smaller versions of your picture for quality. Is the image still sharp enough to show what it needs to show? Choose the least size image you can get away with.

See also:
Yet another way to clean up and sharpen your photos in Gimp
Gimp Basics: Beginning