I have a choice of three on screen viewers. I have Microsoft Viewer which I rarely use, Irfanview which I always used and now Kodak since I installed my digital camera and Easyshare software and which has grabbed all the file associations.

The Kodak viewer is lovely, giving whole screen beautiful digital pictures. The trouble is that previous photos, lots of them all stored in My Pictures, are blown up too big with the Kodak viewer for any real detail, so I decided to change the associations back to Irfanview. However, the new digital pictures are just huge on Irfanview and I have to zoom in several times. Is there a cure for this on either viewer?

New photos from my digital camera come in looking very big. I looked at the properties of one once. I think if I'd have done a paper print without any sort of resizing it would have been about 30 something inches wide!

What it amounts to is that you need to process the image a bit depending on how you want to view it. If you want to print it out you'll need to 'resample' the image to the size you want it to print at. Also change the DPI figure to something like 300 (my camera produces that very large photograph at 72 DPI). That will be good for a print but figures like that will make a photograph look enormous when the actual size is viewed on the screen. An answer is to make photographs fit the screen by using the options in Irfanview already mentioned by Leau78.

Alternatively, if you only ever want to view the photographs on the computer monitor they can be processed for that mode of viewing. The size you choose somewhat depends on the size of monitor you have. A monitor size of 15 - 17" is normally set to a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels (dots that make up the picture). Therefore the image will need saving at a size no greater than that or it won't fit onto the screen (check to see what resolution your monitor is set to in 'Display Properties'). Also, since the picture isn't for printing, a lower DPI can be chosen, typically 96 for on-screen viewing. Keeping that figure down a bit preserves disk space. Big pictures and high Dots Per Inch = large file size.

My monitor set to 1024 x768 and I usually resize images to 800 x 600 pixels for viewing on the computer. I find that quite big enough and it allows screen space for the toolbars etc of the program you're using to view the image with.

If you're not stuck for disk space you could even keep two copies of the photographs. One for on-screen viewing and one for if you ever want to print it.

The best thing to do is experiment with pixel sizes and DPI figures until you find what is best for you.

...Either that or just let Irfanview set the zoom levels. This won't actually alter any photograph properties.