Hopefully these instructions will help those people out.... they are pretty easy to follow....
This is mainly for those who upload pictures to their photobucket and what not. And even more so, for people who upload directly to the forum...
First of all, you need to download a program called IrfanView. It's rad.
The program itself is 876 KB which shouldn't take too long for either dialup or cable.
By the way this is a windows only application, so you mac users.. well you're basically screwed.. just kidding. Anyway here's the links where you can download it .
[] http://www.dotmac.com.au/shae/iview.exe
[] http://www.zenriot.com/random/iview.exe
Ok now that you have it, install it.
[] First is first, you need to click the run button in order to install it.
[] Next this window will come up, for the more advanced users you'll know what to do but for most people just click next. It'll install the desktop shortcut and what not all automatically. DOn't install any of the eBay toolbar stuff. That's a No No.
[] Another window will then come up but you just click Next as it only describes the new features in this version. First of all you must click NONE to make sure this program doesn't over-ride any current settings in which your image files open. This is most important, I know I get pissed off when I install an application and it takes over all the files that I need and opens it with something else. After having selected None, just click Next.
Ok now to actually do the bloody image!
[] First of all locate the file you want, Right click it, then go to "Open With" then select the IrfanView application.
[] Now that the totally rad program is open, you can have a little play with it and see what features are included in it. However this is a faq on making decent sized images to post on forums not Modern day Art 101 so we'll continue on. Now that you have your image open in the program, click on the Image tab, then Resize/Resample.
[] Ok in doing that it should bring up something similar to this. Now there's a few ways to resize your image and i'll go through the three basic ones. First of all, a normal sized imaeg is considered to be about 400x400 pixels, anything above that really is ridiculous and annoying. If the image you have is a standard 800x600, you could simply click on "Half" and that halves the current ratio which inturn would be 400x300. Secondly there's the manual way to do it where by you put new values in "Set new size". Having said this take notice of the "Preserve aspect ratio" option on the bottom which simply means to keep "it's shape". If you don't select it and you choose any random numbers for the new value, then you're going to get a stretched and ugly image, think Courtney Love in last months issue of Womens Weekly..
So basically you can either click "Half" till it's at about 300x300 or 400x400 ish, or you could do it manually. Finally there's the preset ones under the "Half" and "Double" options but they're values are a little big for the forum so I tend to ignore them when posting in forums.
Finally click ok. Then it's your sub-standard File>Save as then select the folder in which you wish to save it in and wallah. You have yourself a nice pic ready to upload to photobucket or where ever and not annoy the rest of the melband community. This can also be used in your avatars people. Please actually, USE IT on your avatars if you have one that's like 300x300. It's pretty silly to see massive avatars from some of the users that have been around for a lot longer than I have, but meh. A normal avatar size is about 100x100.
All in all I think it's an awesome application and is very useful, christ it loads x10 quicker than Photoshop does and you don't need to purchase *coughs* anything *coughs*. Hope this helps least one person..
p.s. I stole these instructions from another forum.... please let me know if you find anything hard to follow... Just PM me or email eelko@aanet.com.au
andi - 
I agree that Irfanview is a totally rad program though. I have to keep my downloads to a minimum cause I think my 6 year old computer is about to go to god! 
