Welcome to HedgeCo Website Creation

One of the support questions that the HedgeCo Website team gets is how they can resize their images for use on the web. Most commonly this is seen when trying to cut an an image to the correct dimensions for a useable headshot.

This entry will give you some simple steps how you can do this with freely available tools.

1. Download Irfanview

The program which I use for my image viewing and manipulation is called irfanview and can be downloaded from this site. The primary use of Irfanview is as an image viewer, so during the installation process you will be asked wether you want to associate Irfanview with your image files.

If you already have a favorite image editing appliction then do not associate any files with irfanview, this is the safest option. If you choose to associate other files (I use the “all image files” option) then whenever you click on the image from our windows explorer it will launch through Irfanview.

2. Starting up Irfanview

After successfully installing Irfanview you will find it in your Start menu. Click on the icon to start up the program, and then drag the image into the window. The fullsize image will load up. For this example, we are starting off with an image of some of our fun-loving HedgeCo Website staff over halloween.

On the bottom right hand corner of the image you will see the size of the image in pixels, this image is 640×480 which is standard for an image which is formatted for use on the web. You will be able to take this quality picture with any webcam.

3. Selecting the Cropping area

We want to create a headshot from this image. Now traditionally headshots are 100px wide and 125px high. So using the selection tool (just click on the image and drag) we can create a box that is the size that we need.

Once we have the portion on the image selected we select “Edit” from the menu and then select “Crop Selection” (you can also click “CTRL-Y” and we have the image that we need.

4. When the image is too large

Often the image that we want to work with is very large (taken with a high-end digital camera). In this case we have to resize the image before we can start cropping it.

To do this, select “Image” from the menu, and then select “Resize/Resample”. This will take us to a page where you can choose what size you want to resize your image. Don’t worry, if you select the wrong size you can just hit CTRL-Z and revert the operation.

Once you have the image to the size you need it you can resume at step number 3.

Tags: Irfanview, Resize Images, Hedge Fund Websites