I'd like to upload a photo, but it's pretty big. I can't figure out how to compress it without sacrificing the quality of the photo. It seems like people are doing it, but when I try, the photo degrades so much that it's useless!!! Help. I have Windows XP, Paint, Adobe Photoshop Elements.

With Paint, you should be able to "Stretch/Skew" to reduce the size without sacrificing quality. Save as JPG.

You should be able to use any good photo editor to resize the pics and retain quality. Some editors do a poor job like Microsoft Photo Editor. Your Adobe software should work fine.

Adobe Photoshop does a good job of resizing pics without losing too much quality. It is best to scale down (or up) photos by the power of 2 (binary math here). For example, scale down either width or height by a half, a quarter, 1/8, etc... Then either save a copy or save as "JPEG" format using Photoshop. A JPEG Options window should pop up with a slider that allows you to select image quality. Slide the slider all the way to the right (quality 12) if you want the best quality at the expense of file size. A quality settings between 6 and 8 would give good image quality and small file size.

Also, when you scale a photo up or down, it will always become fuzzy. Therefore, you will need to use some type of sharpening filter to make the photo crisp again. In Photoshop, there is a "Sharpen" filter and an "Unsharp Mask..." filter. The Sharpen filter sharpens every pixel and works best on small, thumbnail photos. On big photos, the Sharpen filter tends to make everything look pixelated. Therefore, for photos larger than 400 pixels in width or height, it is best to use the "Unsharp Mask..." filter, which adjusts the contrast of edge detail to create the illusion of a sharper image.

Hm-m-m, think I need a newer release of Photoshop. (Mine's 6 I think.)
Dennis-

I have version 5.5, and it has all those filters under the "Filter" menu. In fact, Photoshop always had these filters.

Resize it to 8 x 6 or 6x4 that what I usually do! gl

Richard,
Just checked, and actually I have Realease 3.0, and it does have "unsharp mask" as it turns out.

I'm just a self taught Photoshop hack and can do some impressive stuff with it, but never used that particular feature. Thanks for the heads up.
Dennis-

It can be as simple as other have said, but it can be more complicated too.

I'm not familliar with the "Elements" version of Photoshop, so you may have to hunt for some of these controls, but try this:

First, go to <Image - Mode>, and make sure that you are in RGB mode.

Next, go to <Image - Image Size>, and set the resolution for 72.

After the resolution has been set, use the same window to size the image to 700 pixels wide (Or 700 px high if the pic is taller than it is wide).

If it still looks blurry, try a sharpening filter.

Finally, save the image as a JPG with the baseline optimized and the quality set at 6

Thanks, guys. I'll try it and let you know.