Please Help A Photo N00b!!!! :)

Hello -

I am a total n00b when it comes to working with cropping photos and file size reduction.

What I would like to know is how to reduce the size of an image so that it can increase page load time, but at the same time , keeping the quality of the picture at its best.

Can someone tell me / teach me, how I can do the above with photoshop / fireworks / paint / etc.

Any advice would be awesome!

Thanks in advance!

 

I ussually use 'save for web' in photoshop to reduce file size and to control image quality.

 

photoshop - save for web - choose gif from he options or jpg and reduce the quality a bit to high or medium
you can see if image the preview windows as you reduce quality
also make sure the image size in pixels is reduced to whaever suits best

 

These two articles should explain the process and they have links to free software.

article one

Article two
and this link will let you see the exact same photo at various levels of compression. Is is linked from article 1.

 

Thanks for the Awesome responses guys!

I left you all rep for helping me !!!