I want to sell my bike on Used.ca, so I break out my fancy digital camera and I take a picture of the bike in my apartment. Then I connect my camera to my computer and upload the image, but when I try to attach the image to my ad I run into a problem. The image is too big to upload and, on top of that, I took the picture from too far away so the bike isn’t centered in the image. I don’t have the latest version of Photoshop, so what do I do? Below are a few steps that you can take to crop (ie: snip the unnecessary edges off of a picture) and resize your images for free.

Step 1) Go to www.picresize.com and click on the “Browse” button as indicated by the red arrow below.

Step 2) A box showing files from your computer will appear. Navigate to the folder that your picture is saved in, click on the image file (ex: Bicycle.jpg) and then click on the “Open” button.

Step 3) If you see text in the white box beside the Browse button (see below), then click on the “Continue…” button. If the white box is blank, you have failed to select an image and should go back to Step 1.

Step 4) Your image should appear beside the Crop Menu. Click and drag your mouse over the area of your picture that you would like viewers to focus on. In this case, I’ve selected my bike and would like to delete the surrounded area that is tinted gray. When you are pleased with your selection, click on the “Crop Selection” button.

Step 5) Next, you will be asked to resize your picture. The optimal size for uploading an image to your local Used.ca site is 640×480. I recommend selecting “25% smaller” from the drop down menu to ensure that your image retains it’s aspect ratio and is reduced in size enough to be used on the site.

Step 6) Double-check that the “Save As” drop-down menu is set to JPG, then click on the “I’m Done, Resize My Picture!” button.

Step 7) Take a look at the width and height of your image. If it is close to or smaller than the recommended 640×480, then click the “Save to Disk” icon.

Step 8) Voila, You’re done! Your image should be saved as “rsz_IMAGENAME” to your browser’s default save location. All you have to do now is post it to your ad!

Hope that was useful. Send me a line at michaelc@used.ca with any suggestions you have for future “How To” blog posts.