How to edit screenshots and resize and crop URL images

for posting

I'm a little lost here. I am uploading pictures with photobucket.com but before I do, I have to edit the picture size, and crop sometimes, and I can't seem to do it properly. I mean, I know how to do it, but I'm trying it in Paint and that's a miserable failure and in Lexmark photoshop and the picture comes out less that presentatable IMO. Here is an example



I needed to crop part of it and resize it so I couldn't do it straight off the web URL, but now I'm stuck with a shitty pic. And imagine when I do screenshots of my wickedly awesome plays. Hells no will I allow it! Help! M'aide! Ta'azor li! Gah!

vs. what I want it to be (size and quality)