How to Easily Shrink the Size of a Digital Photo Using IrfanView

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Last Updated: July 1, 2021 Tested

Shrinking a digital photo involves reducing its dimensions and/or resolution. This can be accomplished quite easily by using IrfanView, the leading freeware image editor.

On Unix/Linux platforms, use the free software image manipulation utilities from ImageMagick.

Steps

Download and install IrfanView.
Click File > Open.
The photo will appear in the IrfanView window.
To reduce the quality of a .JPG image without changing its dimensions, click File > Save As and select JPG - JPEG Files from the drop-down list. Click the Options button and use the slide bar to select a lower image quality. This will reduce the disk space used by the photo.
Click the Save button to create the new image.

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If you reduce the quality of an image too drastically, simply re-open the original image and try again. This time, save it at a higher quality. You may have to experiment a bit to find an acceptable compromise.

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If you use a type of digital camera that uses a proprietary picture format, such as RAW or NEF, you will need the add-ins file for IrfanView.

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