If you are looking for a quick way to resize your large photos and keep the same quality, try my solution using Microsoft Office Picture Manager. This software usually comes bundled with Microsoft Office. I hope you have it, because it’s a good program for basic photo and picture modifications.

Once you download the picture from a Web site or from your digital camera, find it on your hard drive (open containing folder) and check the resolution. To do this, click once on the file and the dimensions will be shown in the sidebar on the left side (in Windows XP). For example, 400×600 or 600×800 pixels is considered medium size. 1000 pixels and more in height or width is considered large.

If you want to make the photo smaller, right click on the picture and select Open With, and then click on Microsoft Office Picture Manager in the side menu. If it’s not there, click on Choose Program and then Browse. Navigate to the folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office 11 and select OIS (this is a short name for the Picture Manager).

Once the picture is displayed in the picture manager, click on Edit Picture in the top menu. You’ll see more options in the new menu on the right side. Select Resize and type in custom width and height if you know what you want or simply type in the percentage of the original size. For example, 50% will reduce the picture to half the original size. This will reduce the visual size and also the size of the file. If you are happy with the new look, just Save the file (which will overwrite the original file) or Save as and give it a new name if you wish to keep the original.

If you want to keep the same visual size but want to reduce the file size for email attachments, select Compress Pictures instead of Resize. Then choose one of the 4 options in the next window, for example Compress for Documents or E-mail messages.

Instead of resizing the picture, you can also use the Crop setting to remove frames or any other part of the picture.