For resizing my images, I use a free online tool called Pic Resize (http://picresize.com/). It is really the easiest picture resizing tool I've used since I've started affiliate marketing. The great thing is, it can do more than just resize your images. When you load up the website, you will see the following. I will be using a 4MB picture for the examples.
Step 2: Edit to your heart's content.
If you want special effects or frame borders, you can do so with the filters that they have. If you purely just want to resize you can ignore that portion too.
Finally you can save the image in a couple of formats: jpeg, png, gif, bmp. I chose 'jpg', 'best quality' and customised it to a width of 695 px.
As you can see below, I have already shaved off more than 3 MB in terms of file size.
Can you believe I can reduce the file size even more?