I still have the cards listed below pending, most for over 24 hours soon to be 48.  Does it usually take longer over the weekend to get files approved?  
 148229,148231,148233,148239.148241,148414,148418,148432,148698,148762,148766,
148768,148772,148774,148834,148840
 
Some of these are photos I took with a 7.2 mp camera.  It seems that the highest resolution I can use is 195 at 975w X 1365h (5 inches by 7 inches), to get the file at 3.81 mb.  I am using Photoshop CS2.  The files are mostly showing up as "poor".  I did one at 1892w x 2649h that was a little bit bigger than the 3.85 limit, just to see if it would work and it came up "best", it was just a little bit over 4mb.  It is pending, can the files be a little bit bigger, or is the 3.85 an "absolute" cut off.  Sometimes if the connection doesn't "time out", suggested file sizes are a bit flexible.  
 
Any help would be appreciated..... Thank You!

Hi Lyn!
 
I hope this helps you some.  I can tell you what I do, but mine are normally not photographs, they are digital paintings, fractals, or illustrations, anyway - When I am in Photoshop  Elements I go to the top of the page, click Image/resize/image size/first set the resolution to 350, then go to document size..then depending if you want a landscape or portrait..for landscape put a 7 and click inches under width..then go to the height and put a 5 and make sure inches is clicked.  When I do that I notice that the dimensions are 2450 pixels wide and 1750 pixels high.  When I do this, it seems to work best for me.  While I am working I use png when saving my project because its a lostless format just like tif, then when I am ready to post I change my image to JPG.  Once in a while if I have alot of effects on an image, it goes higher than 3.85.  So then I play with the resolution, perhaps take it down to 325 or even to 300, see if my image comes under 3.85.  Sometimes I play with the jpg settings, but I really want them as high as possible to be the very best but I sometimes go from 12 being the best to 11, then to 10 depending on what takes it to just 3.85MB or under.  I also check on quality by saving and viewing in Windows viewer to see if it looks good at say a jpg setting of 10 or 11, 12 is always the best.  Anyway I hope this helps some.  You might want to get some advice for photographs by contacting someone that has a store that is mostly photography, they would be more experienced then I on sizing and MB's for photos.
 
Also cards do take a bit longer on the weekends to get approved.  Seems like they approve once a day Sat and again on Sunday, just what it seems like to me.  But they can take 24 hours as they need time off too.
Have a great day!

Hi Lyn,
 
I use Photoshop CS2 and most of my images (photographs) start life at over 10 megapixels. I always use the supplied templates which are sized at 5 x 7 inches at 300 dots per inch. From my original Photoshop documents, I duplicate the merged layer to the required template (portrait or landscape) and then resize the truly enormous image so that it fits (using Transform). Then I do whatever else I want to the image, save it as a .psd file and then save as a JPEG at maximum quality (12). If the size of the file is too big (you will see this in the dialog box), then reduce the quality to 11 or even 10. I have never had to go below 10. This increases the compression of the image but does not reduce the number of pixels (which was causing your resolution problem). The compression does throw away some of the image data (JPEG is a "lossy" format) but since the images are printed at only 5 x 7 inches, this is not a problem.
 
Hope this helps. As you can see from the other excellent posts, there are many ways to achieve the desired outcome!
 
Cheers,
 
 
Rosanne