The first page of my site is quite slow to load. A lot of people at "Site review forum" suggest to reduce the image size. Can anyone tell me how to do it? What tool should I use? Can I use Paint shop pro?

Thanks for your help.

I use Fireworks by Macromedia and love it. It has an Export utility that allows you to choose what file size you would like for the graphic and does a nice job at meeting your request with sacrificing the quality of the image marginally (if the request's reasonable). Sorry, but I'm not familar enough with Paint Shop Pro to offer any insight.

jinlu, I'm one of those who suggested you make "thumbnails" to reduce the image size because you are using large images that you are "re-sizing" via html height/width tags.

A "thumbnail" is just a smaller image that you can link to a larger version, or to a page containing the larger version with product details.

I mentioned a jpg that was 303x480 and 23K that you were squishing to 100x100. If you reduced it to a proportional 63x100, you'd have ~95% reduction in total pixels, so should be able to have a thumbnail of similar quality for ~2-3K. This really adds up when you have lots of images on a page!

Yes, you can do this with PaintShopPro, Photoshop or any decent graphics program. I suggest you use your original images, not the already saved jpgs. jpg is a "lossy" format and you do lose quality with each subsequent save. You would then just change the image size and re-save a new version.

I use thumbnails extensively on my sites and follow a naming convention like image1.jpg and image1TN.jpg for the thumbnail. That way they are alphabetically next to each other in various directories and I know which version is which.

HTH.

Thanks for both of your information.

JeromeQ, thank you for your excellent suggestion. I will reduce the thumbnail image size as soon as I find the way. My system is creating the thumbnail image dynamicly, they don't save it. I have to change the code to save the thumbnail images.

Thanks again.

I have to admit I have a bias towards Fireworks and I too love it, but I would also suggest a software title called
RealOptimizerPro... it is awsome for quick and dirty image sizing.
here is the link:
[see profile for url]

It honestly is the cats meow... but does not compare with Fireworks in about a million other things, but! if you want quick photo reduction ... this is it

[ Message was edited by: crash 07/24/2003 10:28 pm ]

in Paintshop.

Open the image and click image... click resize...

Set the pixel size - width or height you want (i.e. 100pixel width)

make sure the "maintain aspect ratio" is on.

Say ok... and then "save as" originalname-th.jpg

in the "save as" window you can hit "options" and set the compression to the quality level you want. I suggest 80.

OR export as jpg and it will give you a little wizard that will help you to save it correctly.

Play with it until you get the balance right between quality & file size.