What are monster photos? They're the product of the new generation of multi mega-pixel cameras and high resolution scanners. These marvelous pieces of modern technology can take a really average photo and turn it into a really average photo of GIGANTIC proportions!


It's often said in the real world that big is beautiful, but in the virtual world of the Internet, big photos, which take an eternity to download, are a big no-no!


Personally I think the images on most of my own web pages are too big, but if I shrink them any further most of the detail would be lost. Some people might say that's a good thing! On average they are about 300 pixels by 200 pixels, and on a good day, with a 56K modem, they take about eight seconds to download.


Recently some of my e-mails have contained images around ten times that size. Great if you're into poster size prints, but if you put that on a web page it could take half an hour to download! Would you wait that long for a web page to appear? I doubt it. No problem if you've got Broadband of course, But the majority of Internet users haven't. If you're like most web surfers you'll wait about half a minute before clicking away to another web site.


If you want to share your photos with others using the Internet, the solution is to simply shrink the photos with some picture editing software. Simply open your photo in the program and resize the image to something more suitable for viewing on the web.


The program called "Paint", which comes with all Windows operating systems can do this for you. For instructions, open the "Paint" program which can be found under "Accessories", then click on "Help" and look under "shrinking".


Of course a good quality picture editing program can do a lot more than just resize images. You can edit out unwanted features in a picture, improve the colours or add stunning special effects. Learning how to use these programs can take a few hours, but the results can be well worth it. To find out more, check out our recommendations below:

Paint Shop Pro 9 Paintshop Pro is one of the most popular image editing packages in the world, due in large part to its magical combination of low price with powerful features. Paintshop Pro is a fully featured digital darkroom in the same mould as Adobe Photoshop. It's equally useful to the casual photo retoucher (red-eye removal) and the professional digital artist. .. Read more Photoshop 8 Photoshop continues to be the photo graphics editor standard against which other products are measured. Used by more graphics professionals than just about any other photo-editing and paint program, it's solid and brimming with features... Read more

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