I bet you’re wondering what’s up with me republishing all of my wedding anniversary recap posts. Well, here’s the reason:
What’s the heck is that, you ask? It’s a report that my host ran to figure out what’s going on with my bandwidth issues. (I’m paying a fortune in overage costs!) As you can see, there are quite a few (there’s actually close to 2,000) photos demanding bandwidth. Just to give you an idea how massive those photos are, the images that I upload to CNC nowadays are between 200-400 KB, so 7.7 M is HUGE! And then there’s an additional 2,000 photos! No wonder my poor little blog is struggling.
The big culprit was the photos in my wedding anniversary recap posts. In my early days of blogging, before I knew that I should resize my photos, I uploaded the images from my wedding photographer to my blog””and they’ve been dragging down CNC ever since. Instead of deleting those posts, I copied and pasted the text and resized the photos before publishing the posts again. I actually need to reduce (or delete) all of the photos, so it’s going to be quite the undertaking over the next several weeks.
With that said, here are a few ways to resize your photos!
Windows Live Photo Gallery
For those of you who use Windows Live Photo Gallery (FYI: it’s a free download), you can easily resize your photos (individually or in batches) by selecting the photo(s) you want to reduce and clicking the “Resize” button under the Edit tab. It’s as easy as that.
Image Resizer for Windows
If you don’t use Windows Live Photo Gallery, you can download Image Resizer for Windows, which also makes it really easy to resize images.
The Image Resizer integrates right into Windows, so you can just right click on a photo and then select “Resize Picture.” A box will pop up that asks you what size to you want to resize the photo to. Typically, you’ll want to choose small or medium, but you can also set a custom resolution.
iPhoto
Oh, how I miss iPhoto. You Mac users have it so good. Anyway, here’s a great tutorial from CNET that explains how to resize an image in iPhoto. It’s wicked easy (because Apple makes everything easy).
Lunch
Today’s lunch was my new favorite salad with balsamic vinegar drizzled on top.
And a toasted whole wheat English muffin with peanut butter and chia seeds on top.
Snack
Now, I’m snacking on a banana with a scoop of peanut butter, an Adora disk, and a cup of coffee with eggnog.
Happy Friday, friends! Don’t forget to reduce your photos!
i am in the market for a new comp…how does Mac treat bloggers?
Also, nthe pics of the english muffins made me hungry instantly!
@Ed: GET A MAC!! You will NEVER regret it! That said, I don’t know what software you are using to blog, but everything should transfer/ relay somehow. Do your homework about your software, but you won’t regret your Mac purchase — I’m still blogging in my blog/ Internet host website most of the time (bad, bad, bad idea, I know) so I don’t notice any difference. It’s all the same. I switch between my Mac and desktop at home often.
@Sarah S.: Awesome! That is one vote for the mac column (which already has several) thanks….
Image resizing, bandwidth issues, server shenanigans…oh, I am all too familiar. Thanks for the reminders and sorry you have overage charges 🙁
Mine doesn’t charge extra…it will simply just…ummm crash. Oh, the joys.
I was definitely curious about the re-posted wedding recaps, especially since you tweeted about them. You were a beautiful bride. 🙂 Have fun resizing everything!
*sigh* why can’t mac come up with something akin to windows live writer already?
@lynn @ the actor’s diet: I KNOW! I’m already saving my money, so I can buy a new Mac as soon as they come out with a GOOD blogging program!
@lynn @ the actor’s diet: Mac is supposed to be all about creating your own media, so why is their only option iWeb, which only gives you weird pre-fab templates?
Resizing is def annoying!! My blog is tiny and it was crashing my computer!!
A super easy, fast way to compress pictures is with Adobe Fireworks. Can take an image from 2mb to 200kb easily. 🙂
I was DEFINITELY trying to figure out what was going on. I was like… its not their anniversary TODAY, obviously?!?
I know everyone loves macs, but I’m a new user and can’t get used to blogging on mine. In fact, I hate it. Do you have any blogging tips for mac users? I miss my Windows Live stuff! 🙁
@Melissa: I used Ecto when I had a Mac and I hated it. I use WLW now on a PC.
This post made me want an English muffin w/peanut butter all of a sudden. Yum!!!
I LOVE my Mac and find no issues with blogging!
This is a good idea–changing the pic sizes. For me, I just changed the actual sizes of the photos on my point and shoot camera, so most photos are super small.
Great tutorials–thanks!
Perhaps an obvious question, but when I upload photos into Livewriter, and select size, does that automatically reduce the size the way you are reducing size through Windows Live Photo Gallery?
Wow, good to know! Do you know of any good resizing programs/editors that work on Macs?
Great tips!!
I’m not a big fan blogging on my hubby’s Mac. I’m a PC girl at heart and am actually in the process of shopping around for a new one (PC that is) to blog on.
I am evidently a moron — because I blog on my Mac and PC and can’t tell the difference. (But I blog on my blog host’s site — again, I’m a moron, I know…). If I went on my PC and used Live Writer would I never go back to my Mac? (I doubt it — it would take me 20 minutes to type this comment — it is S-L-O-W….!!)
Thanks for the info about re-sizing pics. Obviously, I have SO much to learn…!
you were just talking in a language i don’t understand! glad it’s figured out, though… and it was fun to (re)read your anniversary story!
Interesting – thanks for the tip! my little blog is just that… and i’m not familiar with anything more technical than using the photo-y looking button and font color button! LOL sigh. One day! 🙂
Well, as sorry as I am that you had this glitch to deal with, I WAS very entertained reading your wedding recap 🙂 I just got married 2 months ago, so I am still slightly obsessed with weddings. I now can’t wait til my one year anniversary to bust my top tier outta the freezer! Oh – and your dress was so perfect for you!
Wow, bummer to hear about the photo issues, I hope everything gets sorted out soon. But, thanks for posting the tips!
Thanks for this helpful info, Tina!
I’m confused. As much as I love seeing the recaps again, why couldn’t you just resize the photos and edit them into the old posts? Won’t you lose things like backlinks to the old posts, data/analytics associated with them, the comments, etc? Or did I miss something?
If I resized the photos and put them back into the original post, I’d have to upload each photo one-by-one, which would have taken forever. Reposting them with WLW meant I could upload them all at once, which is way faster and easier.
@Tina:
Oooohhh, gotcha. That makes more sense now. Thanks!
I’m thankful I realized the whole resize thing within the second month of blogging so I don’t run into this issue down the road! I use the resize feature on WL Gallery, it takes 10 seconds per post. Easy!
Thanks for the tip! Mine would usually crash, instantaneously 😀
I’ve never given much thought to resizing my photos. And I just got a mac, so I’m in luck. Thanks!
Where is your place mat from??? I love it so much!
Marshall’s!
Hi! I’m a relatively new follower of your blog. Just out of curiosity, I noticed you said that you miss iPhoto – why the switch to a PC?
Apple doesn’t make a good blogging software, so I’m stuck with a PC.
What beautiful wedding pictures and your cake, oh boy that look yummy! I never saved out wedding cake wish we did, it was so good! Chocolate cake with raspberry filling and a vanilla butter cream frosting! Yum, now I want a slice!
What is the orange adora disk? The ones I have are wrapped in purple.
And here I was, thinking that you were just in a romantic mood and felt like randomly reposting your wedding posts! Glad you figured out the photo issue, though!
You add eggnog in place of milk, cream, etc? Sounds delicious, and way cheaper than trying the Starbucks Egg Nog Latte I’m curious about. I was hoping for a sample so I wouldn’t be wasting 5 bucks on a sugary drink! Consider your idea with the eggnog officially “borrowed!”
I enjoyed the recaps…at first I was a bit confused and was like “I’m sure they’ve been married for over a year” 🙂
Great tip Tina. Sometimes I wish I had “live in tech support” who could give me tricks and tips daily.
It’s so easy to forget how much “space” these take up since we don’t physically see it! I was mindlessly backing up photos on an external hard drive, and it totally stopped saving because I didn’t realize I kept saving the pictures over and over again instead of just the new ones. Whoops…
great advice — I’ll have to learn more and figure out what I’m currently doing. thanks! 🙂
Thanks for sharing! I used to use blogger but now have my own domain hosted by wordpress. It was so easy using picasa to resize my pictures but with the new domain, I didn’t know what to do!
By the way, do these programs save a *new* copy of the photo that it resizes? Or do you have to make sure you make copies and then resize (because it copies over the file)? Trying to decide which to use! Thanks again!!
~Ang
The Smush.it plugin for WordPress also helps TONS for this. I’m not sure how it works with WLW (I write on a Mac in the WP interface), but it automatically optimizes and reduces file size for each photo you upload. My host recommended it to me and it helped dramatically with my bandwidth issues.