JPEG sizing

[old fart]

Hi Folks
I intended to e-mail some jpegs yesterday.
One went fine, but the rest blocked.
After checking I saw that most of my jpeg photo's had become huge. (32x24 inches) about 2.8 kb each! My pictures folder is now 5GB.
Any ideas what happened or how to get them back to normal.??
Many thanks
Cheers:bored:
OF

PS system restore did not achieve anything.

[bnt]

- System Restore doesn't modify your data, only the operating system - by design. (Would you want it modifying your files? I wouldn't!)

- Assuming the standard resolution of 300dpi, a 32"x24" JPEG will be a lot bigger than 2.4kB. More like 2.4MB, possibly much larger, depending on the quality. They would be in the range that some ISPs consider "too big", so that part I can understand. My camera is "only" 6 megapixels but each photo is about 1MB in JPEG, ad 10MB in RAW format. What camera was it, or were the photos scanned?

- I don't know of any mechanism that would cause your files to expand in size by themselves. I have to say that the most likely explanation is you: something you did, or (more likely) the photos are fine, and picture files really can get that big, straight from the camera or scanner.

[twiggs]

The size of your photos is determined by the settings in your camera or scanner.
You just need to change the resolution of either of these devices to a lower setting until you achieve a satisfactory size.

[old fart]

Thanks for the answers.
I meant 2.4MB's of course.
I had just downloaded a number of pics from the camera which were taken at the highest resolution.
However, the pics already in the computer are now all about that size.
Is that possible?
Cheers
OF

Further to that.
My camera gets used by everyone in this house. If I have been taking pics at high resolution for some time and just not noticed until now, is it possible to change the resolution before emailing?
I know that the email program does this automatically, however if the original is huge then the reduction does not seem to be enough.
Thanks

[Background Noise]

Presumably, they are at the size they were downloaded from the camera. Personally, I would keep them at that size for best quality - specially if you ever want to print from them. A number of email programs will re-size attachment photos or get a simple picture resizing program for email purposes, but keep the originals (so save the re-sized version using a different name).

Simple progs like irfanview, in the ultimate list sticky, will let you resize. You can also increase the jpeg compression to achieve smaller files but you will also lose quality.

[old fart]

Thanks
I just downloaded a prog called PIXresizer.
Worked fine.
Cheers
OF:ok:

[bnt]

If your computer has Microsoft Office installed, you have the "Office Picture Manager" program, which is excellent for simple tasks like resizing & basic colour tuning. On Linux, it's got to be The Gimp, which you can also get for Windows & Mac at no cost.

I agree with the others: always keep the originals. When working with digital media of any kind, incl. sound and video, it's easy to do things that cause information & quality to be lost, and once it's gone, it's gone. You can always archive originals to DVD+ROM or whatever, but burn multiple discs, don't trust everything to a single burned disc.