You should have the picture the way you want it by now. Cropped, resized, enhanced, etc. Now to convert it to JPG format so you can use it on eBay. Click on FILE on the toolbar then EXPORT then FILE FORMATS.

This maybe the hardest part for some of you so lets take a close look at what we have here.

#1 is the folder that the picture will be saved in, Pics5 in my example. If you clicked the down arrow next to it you would see which drive it is stored on and if it is a sub-folder of another folder. This is very important to know so you can find the picture when you go to upload it later.

#2 shows all the same type of files that are all ready in the Pics5 folder and any sub-folders. In this example there are no like file types but there is a sub-folder, Pics6. (It's just my illogical way of storing images on my computer that makes sense to me).

#3 shows the current name of the picture. Adobe always gives images a default name of Untitled-X, where X is a number value, and they are an Adobe proprietary file type, PDD. Here you will type in the name you want to give your picture, do that now. The name only, you do not need to type in the extension, in this case the extension will be JPG.

#4 is all the file types we can choose, and we want JPG so click on it. The drop down window will close and the JPG extension is added to the name of the picture. Note: Adobe saves the file extension in all uppercase. You need to remember that when you enter the URL of the picture if you do not rename the file later and make the extension lowercase letters.

#5 you should see the name with the extension in the FILE NAME box, now click on SAVE.

Another window will now pop up that looks like this. Click the OPTIONS button and yet another window will pop up. (This is the most complicted conversion routine of any image editor that I have used).

This next window gives you 4 choices. Each choice will "compress" to a different file size. The file size is different than the picture size. The picture size is measured in pixels, 640 X 480 say. The file size is measured in kilobytes. That is how much disk space the picture will use. It also affects the transfer (download) time for people to view your picture.

This is important because you can further reduce the size of the file to make it load faster when viewed in your auction. For most of you the MEDIUM or HIGH setting will do fine. If the image is very low resolution to begin with stay with MAXIMUM. But if the picture is at 72 PPI or higher you can choose MEDIUM or HIGH.

Experiment with the different settings to see what works for you. I experimented a little and MAXIMUM compresses about 15 to 20 percent, HIGH about 40 percent, MEDIUM about 60 percent and LOW about 65 percent. Not much difference between LOW and MEDIUM. You can generally compress a good quality JPG image 20 percent with no noticeable difference. 40 percent compression will see a very small difference in quality and 50 percent or more is generally noticeable, but still good. But since all monitors, video cards, and even eye sight is different for every viewer of your picture, there are no hard and fast rules. I personally like to keep pictures (reduced from 640 X 480 to 480 X 360, 25 percent reduction) no larger than 40k and I shot for under 30K. They still look good and they load fast.