Go to
http://imagemagick.org/ and grab a free copy of the free stuff. It's so free that you even get a copy of the source code and permission to do with it whatever you want. That's free as in "free beer" <i>and</i> free as in "free speech".
There's a GUI interface for you if you want to go to all the extra trouble. Me, I just do something like entering <blockquote><font face="fixed" size="+1">convert -resize '50%' image.jpg image_sm.jpg</font></blockquote> at the command line and nanoseconds later I have the modified image ready to use. It defaults to a JPEG quality of 85, I think, but you can specify the quality value if you want more or less. There's so much you can do with this stuff it'll make your head spin. It'll even convert or display images directly from the network:<blockquote><font face="fixed" size="+1">convert h<i></i>ttp://w<i></i>ww.madsens1.com/graphics/carb.jpg carb.png
display h<i></i>ttp://w<i></i>ww.madsens1.com/graphics/carb.jpg</font></blockquote>
The thing about attaching images here is that if you preview your post, you need to tell the site about the image again or it'll get not-posted when you post your posting. At least that's been my experience.
John's example would be something like<blockquote>[<i></i>img]http://www.madsens1.com/graphics/carb.jpg[<i></i>/img]</blockquote>which would end up as
If you don't include the protocol (scheme) and delimiter (i.e. "http://") as in <blockquote>[<i></i>img]www.madsens1.com/graphics/carb.jpg[<i></i>/img]</blockquote>you'll end up with a broken link like this
But the mechanism used here isn't really any easier than just using the HTML code itself like <blockquote><img src="http://www.madsens1.com/graphics/carb.jpg"></blockquote>for
<img src="http://www.madsens1.com/graphics/carb.jpg">
Holler if you need a hand.
Glen