My Memory Lane

I need a standard size for saving my digital camera photos to my computer.?

My computer's memory is getting low because my digital photos are way too big. What is a standard size that I can set them to in Photoshop without ruining the quality? Right now they are all at about 700 KB (document size) and the resolution is at 180. Should I change the Pixel dimensions or the document size?

Public Comments

1. I would not sacrifice quality by reducing file (picture) size just because my hard disk space is low. I would either delete/move my files in the hard disk, or just get another hard disks. Reducing image size/file size will always resulted in lower quality so thats what I choose. Thankfully I got a DVD writer so I don't have to face that kind of crisis.
2. Actually it is your hard drive storage space that is low- external hard drives can be found for less than $100 at a Best Buy or such and can hold 300 gigs of files at that price. Back up all your images and important files, since computer hard drive crashes are common. My computer hard drive is nearly full and I back up to two external drives, since sadly, these too can crash. I wouldn't save at a lower resolution since this limits the eventual size you can print at in the future. There are services online that are free or inexpensive that will allow you to back up files to their servers- a nice insurance policy against lost images.
3. The "standard" size for saving images on your computer is the highest quality and resolution your camera will support. When you hard drive starts getting full, you can start backing up all your images to CD's or even DVD's Reducing the size of the images is never a good idea unless you have a saved copy of the original. As you have probably seen here there are may people asking the question, "how do I make my picture bigger with out it getting blurry?" The answer is you can't. Once you throw away the data making your image files smaller, it is forever gone. Many do this accidental when they resize their images for use in email or posting on the Internet. The forget to save the smaller images as a new name and write over their original. Of course there is a more straight forward way.. just buy a 300 GB hard drive and add it to your computer (desktop only). They are under $100 and easy to install.
4. If your pictures are important to you, I'd buy an external hard drive and save all your pictures there. You should not reduce the quality of your pictures just because you are running out of room on your computer. If you plan on printing or using your pictures in the future, find some kind of reliable storage medium.