Three Ways to Reduce Image File Size Using MS Paint

Before working on any image file, always make a backup copy of it. MSPaint (or any image editing softare) can reduce image file sizes, but they cannot revert an image back to its original size/resolution.

  1. CROP: If you are not interested in having the whole image, but just want a part of it, you can crop like this.
  2. Open the image in MSPaint.
  3. Select (with mouse) the area you want to keep.
  4. Press Control - C to copy into the clipboard.
  5. Press Control - A to select all, then press the delete button on your keyboard.
  6. Press Control - V to paste what you wanted back in.
  7. Scroll to the bottom right of the screen (using horizontal and vertical scroll bars) and drag the bottom right corner up close around the part you wanted to keep (so that your image will not have white area around the edges).
  1. Reduce Visual Size: Suppose you have a picture that is 1000 pixels wide and you want the image to be 500 pixels wide, without cropping anything out, and keeping the same proportion as the original picture had.
  2. Open the image in MSPaint.
  3. From the Home tab, click on "Resize". Click the Pixels option, then type in 500 (desired width in pixels). If you have the "Maintain aspect ratio" clicked, then MSPaint will figure out what the new height should be.

  1. Reduce Quality: Suppose you have a picture that is 1000x1000 pixels. You want to keep all of the image and keep the visual size about the same, but you just want to lose some of the resolution. You can do this trick, which is making an image smaller (looses resolution), then making it larger again (does not regain resolution).
  2. Open the image in MSPaint.
  3. From the Home tab, click on "Resize" then type in 75% for Horizontal percentage. Click OK.
  4. Always leave the "Maintain Aspect Ratio" clicked -- to avoid introducing distortion into your image.
  5. From the Home tab, click on "Resize" again. This time, type in 133% for Horizontal percentage. Click OK. The image will get visually larger (approximately back to its original number of pixels), but the resolution (and the file size) will be less.