Mike, there must be better way to do scaling

[mikemeister_admin]

Mike,
1. First mistake I made was that I thought files were to be no larger than 500k which was incorrect (shd b 300K). Found out when I went to upload.
2. It seems to be just a wild guess on how much to reduce the image. Isnt there positive way of determining what the file size will be when rescaling?
3. In some cases I just reduced the Res from 300 to 72 which took the file size way down. Is that a acceptable method?
Thanks Joe S

[mikemeister_admin]

Joe,
   For the photos I have added to the gallery and also when I am entering challenges on the web I use "save for web" in photoshop. I believe that "PS Elements" has it also.  The challenges I enter and for the gallery I adjust the photo to the longest side to  800 pixels. My camera gives me a 2832 x 2128, reduces to 800 x 601. The size can be changed either in photoshop (image-image size) or in "Save for web".
   The size of 2832 x 2128 at "0" quality in "save for web" is 377 K. The size of 800 x 601 at "0" quality is 38.87 K. Increasing quality to 75 increases the size to 298K. You can vary both the size and quality depending on what you prefer. I find that the size of 800 on the longest side enables me to have a quality very acceptable for most web viewing. Save for web gives you instant size reading as you adjust.
   I hope this helps.
          Barry

Joe, I should mention that when you save in "save for web" the camera data is not saved with it.

[-default]

I think Barry has summed it up pretty well.  I generally change the quality setting in the dialog that comes up for a jpeg save, until the file size is where I need it to be.