I’m spending most of today resizing some photos for upload to a photo-sharing site. Just thought I’d pass some resizing tips on to the rest of you. If you need to resize a bunch of photos, make sure they are all going the same direction. In other words, put all your horizontal photos into one folder, and all your vertical photos in another. That way, when you resize everything, they won’t end up being all distorted.
So, how do you go about resizing photos? If you use Photoshop Elements, or Photoshop, look under the file menu for “automate > batch…” or something similar. You’ll then see options for which file or folder to convert, to which file format, image size, and destination folder. Decide on what size you want the photos saved to (I chose about a 3 inch by 4 inch size), and type those numbers in. Or you can use about 230 pixels by 290 pixels, at 72 dpi. Once you have selected a folder, sit back and watch the magic happen.
The program, in the case of Photoshop Elements, will take each photo in that file, display it for a second, resize it, save it in the new size, and move on to the next photo. Once the entire folder is resized, it will stop. Then just re-select another folder and do it all over again. There are other programs that work just as well, and maybe better than the one I use. Here is a list, and some links for further reading:
Microsoft has what is called image resizer, which is part of the Microsoft Powertoys package. They suggest organizing and renaming your digital pictures first, before resizing files, and to make sure and save an original copy of the photos you are resizing. Image resizer automatically does that.
Visualizer is freeware, and it is a photo resizer, and includes an image browser and a simple web album designer. Yet another free one is PIXresizer. It will resize files, convert between formats (.jpg, .bmp, .gif, .png, and .tif), and create thumbnails.
Easy Thumbnails is for creating thumbnail (small) images, but you can set the dimensions for the resize as high as 300 pixels, which is ideal for a photo size on the web. It is also a freeware program, from the makers of Notetab text editors. Of course, there is the program I reviewed earlier, Picasa, too.
Here are some suggestions for other programs from Adam, over at the computer blog here at families.com.
Find a program that you like and use it often. Remember, a typical image from your digital camera is about the size of a bulletin board. And it doesn’t take many of those to fill up your hard disk fast.