Hey guys, ok so this is my first tutorial and I've decided to address a situation that I keep seeing in the Free Graphics Requests section. There are a lot of requests that ask someone to reduce the file size of an image, be it a static image or a GIF. There are also lots that ask for images to be reduced in dimensions to fit certain limitations such as avatar and signature space. I'll be showing you how to do these things in Photoshop.

I understand there are other ways to do this, but here's how I do it.

This took me a long time to create this so I'd appreciate feedback if you found this useful or not :D

Before we start, I'd like to mention that some of the images I've posted are very large, I apologize for this.

So, starting with the most basic of these tasks, changing the dimensions of a static image. I'll be using this image that I found on Google images:
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Open the image in PS and follow the steps

Step 1:
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Step 2:
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Step 3:
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This is how the image would turn out if you decide not to keep the proportions
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That's about it for changing image dimensions, just be sure to save the image when you're done ;)


Now, moving on to changing the file size of a static image. I'll be using an image taken by JAMESY™ that I found on this thread. This is the image I'll be using.
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As you can see, the size of this image is about 15mb. Here's the image file size on the properties of the image. It may be different on the image above because for some reason when I uploaded it to imgur the file size changed as well. So alternatively, from this experience I've just encountered, you could just upload the image to imgur if you want the file size changed :L
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However, I'll carry on in the hope that this will be useful for someone.

Step 1:
Open the image
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Step 2:
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Step 3:
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Edited image:
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That's the end of lowering the file size of an image.

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Now, moving on to the hardest thing in this tutorial, changing the file size of a GIF. I say hardest, its not hard as such, it can just take a while. This tutorial also includes changing the dimensions of a GIF, I've combined both of them into this one tutorial, so if that's what you came for, you'll find it below.

Keep in mind that changing the file size of a GIF will probably lower the image quality too, which is what you will notice if you read the rest of this tut.

This is the GIF I will be using
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Step 1:
Open the image. I wont include a picture for this step.

Step 2:
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Step 3:
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Step 4:
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Step 5:
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Step 6:
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Step 7:
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Step 8:
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This is the new file size, as you can see its under 75kb, making it useable as a HF avatar.
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Edited GIF:
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That's it for this tutorial, I hope this has been useful to someone 🤝