I OUGHT to be able to do it on Photoshop 9 but so far trial and error has not produced the desired result
Trish - if you already have Photoshop you can do your resizing quite easily.
Do you have Photoshop Elements 9 or Photoshop 9?
Either way, I think the menu options are similar.
Firstly, you need to resize the actual dimensions of your photo. The ideal WIDTH should be no bigger than 650 pixels - the height is not critical. Wider than this and you could get horizontal scrollbars, especially for people who don't have widescreen monitors, which doesn't look pretty.
1) From your Photoshop menu select
Image / Image size. The dialog box that appears will show the current size of your photo.
Make sure '
Constrain Proportions' is checked and change the
Width to 650 pixels.
As photo size is the main object of this exercise you don't really need to worry about the other settings for now, so just click OK.
2) You now need to save your photo for web use, but you can't just select the "Save" option, as the photo will still be too large in megabyte size.
Instead, select "
Save for Web & Devices." The dialog box that appears allows you to select the quality of the photo and the actual file size is shown below the photo as you reduce the quality. You need to be looking at a size up to about 128kb. Less than this you can still get good quality results for purposes of showing on the Forum.
This is a fairly simplified set of instructions. If you want something a bit more detailed you could look at the following link -
http://photographylife.com/how-to-properly-resize-images-in-photoshop which also shows screenshots of the steps involved.
I could have done this myself, being involved with computers and graphics work for a LOT of years and is easier for me, but to save time it was quicker to give you the link where the tutorial work has already been done