NormPR

I have been taking pictures and working with them for about five years and have just run across a problem i have never yet encountered. I just purchased a new car and it has a navigation screen that I can put in my own home screen, the problem is their size requirements. It says JPG, GIF,DNG or GMP, 1.5MB or less and 800 X 384. How do I take a 7 KB photo and size it down to their specs? I don't know where to start after reading PSE tutorials and even downloaded two other quickie photo programs. Thanks for any help, and to make matters worse I just bought a new Mac computer and all my photos are in my backup drive and I can't access them with the Mac
, my old computer was Windows. :-(

jack schade Loc: La Pine Oregon

When you save the image as a JPEG you can reduce the compression to make the file much smaller.
Jack

wisner Loc: The planet Twylo

If your photos are on an external backup drive, simply plug it in to your Mac's usb port, open iPhoto, or better, a program such as Lightroom, go to File>Import and navigate to the folder your photos are living in and import them. They will, by default, go to your Mac's Picture folder in your home folder.
A 7 KB image is EXTREMELY small; do you mean 7000 KB? Need some more info. In IPhoto you can specify the size when you export the file out.
I use PS and not Elements, but you should be able to resize your image and specify the size you need. In PS, the File>Image Size can do this. There are Hoggers who are more familiar with Elements than I am; perhaps they can be more specific.
Good luck!

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Use the crop tool to crop to 800x384. You don't have to actually reduce the image area, just apply the crop to the full image and it will downsize it to fit into your screen. It has NOTHING to do with file size in KB or MB.

big-guy Loc: Peterborough Ontario Canada

For complete accuracy use a 2 step approach.
1. Use a crop format of 25x12 (format, not inches, pixels etc.) This will give you proper X and Y settings. Resize (lock aspect ratio) and move the crop around your photo to give the best placement. Apply.
2. Resize the resulting image to (use pixels) 800 pixels wide by 384 pixels high. Apply.

MOST IMPORTANT: Save As to a new file-name so you don't overwrite your original.

The new file should be under the required Mb/Kb limit. If not save again and use more compression. (in jpg use maybe an 8 instead of a 10 for quality)

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

This should help - she is a little hesitant but gets the idea across.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23FVr6lcOfg

The reason I suggested the crop tool, is that the aspect ratio is an odd one. By specifying the exact pixel dimensions on crop, you will have the precise horizontal and vertical pixel dimensions of 800 X 384. If your image is bigger than 1.5mb, you can decrease the quality until the file size meets the criteria.

NormPR

Thank you all for the helpful information. I'm still getting used to the new computer and will try your suggestions tomorrow, I'll let you know. You guys are always here to answer any question that comes up and I certainly appreciate that.

mcveed Loc: Kelowna, British Columbia (between trips)

They want you to resize the image so it is 800 x 384 pixels (or less). Then they want you to convert it to jpeg and use enough compression to get the file size down to 1.5 MB or less. You can do this in Lightroom. Load the picture into Lightroom. Go to the upper left and click on "Image". From the drop down menu select "Resize", then "Image size". A resize dialog box will open. Click on the box at the bottom left that is labeled "Resample". Now you can change the numbers in the box to show either a width of 800 pixels or a height of 384. When you change one number the other will change automatically to retain the correct shape of the picture. Click OK. Now save it to your desktop as a jpeg file. This is the tricky part now. When saving it as a jpeg another box appears for you to insert the jpeg options. The quality selection will determine how large the file will be. You need to select a quality that will get the saved file within the limit set. You will have to save it and then check the file on your desktop to see how large it is. Right click the picture on your desktop and click "Get Info" in the box that pops up. Another box will pop up with all sorts of info about the file. Check the second line from the top which is Size in Kbs or MBs. If the file is too large you will have to go back into Lightroom and save it again with a lower quality setting. There may be a faster and simpler way to do this but I don't know what it is, unless you buy a dedicated software program like 'Perfect Resize'.

NormPR

mcveed, thank you, as I said i am breaking in a new computer and it is as much trouble as the resizing. I will try this as soon as I am done on this site, but I tried some of the other suggestions and it said my pictures were no on file while I was looking at it. every day it says something different and I did no computer stuff today so I will try. Thanks again

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Since he needs a 800x384 sized image, wouldn't he be better off to:

1. Crop to that size (Press R to crop), then specify the exact pixel dimensions he needs for the crop window, which will lock the aspect ratio to 8x3.84, which he can then resize or crop as needed, up to the full width of the image, while maintaining the aspect ratio.

2. Then you can export the image as a jpeg in the export settings dialog, and specify the file to not exceed 1500 kb - and he'd be done.

Simple two step process. No need to export it multiple times to get the file to the right size, guessing along the way, or any additional resizing and/or resampling.

NormPR

My Lightroom has a problem (or it's my ignorance of the new computer) after getting some of my photos transferred, only about 700, I can't open any of them. Every one says offline or missing. However on PSE12 I did manage to get a photo to download to the car, it is smaller than the screen so I will try your latest suggestion (Gene51), maybe that will fill the gap. Thank you