Photo File size help?

[Shawike]

My girlfriend just gave me a new digital camera as my early christmas present, and it is quite nice compared to the one I was using prior. I dug through my first seasons finds and took about 60 pictures of each and every piece I had questions about (I'm still at the stage where there's something I don't understand about every piece I pick up) and the photos are all 2+MB each. A couple of the photos were of fossils I had found and when I went to attach them at the FossilForum the max for a post was 2MB. Now I understand that I probably took these photos at the maximum quality settings for the camera, but thats what I wanted to do! (Right??? Or do you need to tune down the pixels or whatever on the settings to make for smooth transfer to a forum post?) Also are there ways I can just make these photos a smaller size (file size or literal "size" to do so, without making them too small?) The camera is a Canon PowerShot SX130 IS and the software that my computer opens photos with, as well as the software the camera came with, doesn't allow for me to edit the photos in a way that will lessen the file size at all. (other than cropping) Hope my longwinded explanation didn't scare everyone away, thanks in advance for the help!