Since Skypilot has posted a link to Irfanview in the How to post Photos on S&T or Shrink Your Photos forum, I thought that it might be helpful to post a mini tutorial as to how to use it to resize your pictures. I use Irfanview all the time for this purpose. It can do much more, but that is not the subject of the lesson.

1. After loading Irfanview, select your file. It will automatically be resized to fit in the window, but it won't exceed the actual size of the picture.
2. Use your mouse to drag a rectangle around the area that you want to use. Then go to Edit/Crop Selection (or press Ctrl+Y). Once again, your picture resizes to fit in the window.
3a. Select Image /  Resize/Resample... to get to the resize dialog box.
3b. There are lots of options. The easiest is to select one of the default options, then press OK. If you make a mistake, you can undo the last action by going to Edit/Undo, or by pressing Ctrl+Z. It is easy to try different sizes until  you find the most pleasing result.
4. When you are satisfied with your final result, Save the File.
5. I save by selecting File/Save (original folder) and then by saving under a different name so as not to overwrite the original picture.

ian