Click "Build" on the main Menu, then "Set Active Configuration" on the drop-down menu. This opens a dialog that shows you all possible build configurations. Just switch to the "Release" configuration (that's the selected configuration in the picture), press Ok and then do another build. This creates a release folder containing the release executable. For a simple "Hello World" Application, the debug executable is 169 KB in size. The release exe is 40KB.
You aren't just limited to these two configurations either. Click "Build" on the main menu then "Configurations". This is where you add extra configurations. For example, a project for one customer may include additional functionality, perhaps implemented in an extra dll. This is where you create that configuration. You can then customize it in the Settings dialog. (Click "Project" on the Main menu then "Settings" on the drop-down).
On the Next Page : Learn about Settings on the next page.
