We’ve all been there. At some point or another, we’ve tried to upload a layout or picture to a gallery somewhere, and received the Error of Gallery Posting Death: your file is too big to be posted. Okay- so we change the resolution, resize and resize and resize, until the gallery in question will take the layout- only to find out that it’s either too small to be seen by the naked eye, or it’s so blurry that nobody knows what you’ve posted. Luckily, you don’t have to give up on posting to galleries! There’s an easy, simple solution- for anyone who uses Photoshop.

First- open an image. Any image, remember- we’re just learning here! I chose a picture of my husband, Mike.

Once you have your image open, you would do whatever you want to it- make adjustments, correct red eye, play with the filters, whatever. But for the sake of this tutorial, I’m going to skip all that, and just move on to saving the image.

Go to File>Save For Web.

A screen will pop up. If this is your first time using Save For Web, you will need to change a setting, or else it will save the image as a gif. In the upper right hand corner, under the Done button, you’ll see some drop down menus. Change the Preset drop down menu to JPEG High.

Next, click on the Image Size tab (see above picture). Change the pixel size, or the percent, to whatever suits you. You’ll notice in the lower left hand corner, the size of the file.

When you have the image down to the size that you want, click ‘Save’ and then save your work. Either choose a new name, or save the file somewhere other than where the original file is saved. I prefer to save my resized files in a separate folder, labeled ‘Share’. This makes it easier for me to find the resized file when I’m ready to share it with others.