Picture Resizer: It looks like batch image resizing DOES get easier

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Picture Resizer: It looks like batch image resizing DOES get easier

by Brad Linder Apr 3rd 2008

Yesterday evening we told you about a program called Squash, which offers a simple way to batch resize images on Windows, Linux, or OS X. While we still think it's a handy little utility, a reader pointed us to another application that makes us rethink our claim that image resizing doesn't get much easier.

Picture Resizer could be one of the simplest, yet most useful image utilities we've run across in a while. It's Windows only, but it's free and powerful.

All you have to do is download the Windows-only executable file to any directory. Then drag an image over the program icon. That's it. The image will automatically be resized. By default, all images will be resized so that they are 400 pixels wide. But wait, you say, I want to make my images 200 pixels wide, or 1600 pixels wide. No problem. Just change the program name from PhotoResize400.exe to PhotoResize200.exe or PhotoResize1600.exe.

If you want to resize a group of images, just highlight them and drag them all to the icon. Picture Resizer will convert the images and spit out new images (with the pixel width appended to the image names) in the same directory.

[Thanks JDeV!]

Tags: images, photos, picture-resizer, pictures, resize

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Martin said 12:20PM on 4-03-2008

The link is broken.

Brad Linder said 12:24PM on 4-03-2008

Thanks, we fixed it!

Greg said 12:47PM on 4-03-2008

In Ubuntu the nautilus add-on in the package "nautilus-image-converter" is even easier because it's integrate with the file manager and very simple being on the right click menu.

jules said 1:29PM on 4-03-2008

If only windows explorer showed the filename so you know what you're resizing to.
In the command prompt it says "press Enter to Exit". That's like press Start to Shutdown, right?

JoseB said 4:34PM on 4-03-2008

Doesn't MS already have a "power toy" that does this? I believe it's called Image Resizer, once installed you just have to right-click on any image (or group of images), and hit "Resize Pictures" and it gives you a few pre-set options as well as an "advanced" section to make custom sizes...

dfgdfg said 8:18AM on 4-04-2008

The idea with the ExeName is creative -- and that's about it.

sandra08 said 8:19AM on 4-04-2008

PIXresizer is a great free tool for image resizing. Resize one or multiple pictures, view existing image info, choose to resize to specific sizes or choose your own 'custom' size, maintain aspect ratio, output to gray scale, etc etc

http://bluefive.pair.com/updates.htm

Glynnjamin said 11:13AM on 4-09-2008

MS already makes a better version of this under their XP Power Toys. You install it and it gives you a right-click context menu when you click on a photo that says resize.

It then gives you the option Small (640x480), Medium (800x600), Large (1024x768), Handheld (240x320). You just pick what you want and it dumps out your photo.jpg file as photo (small).jpg in the same directory. You can also set it to do a custom size and to write over the original.

If you want to do batch conversions (like say taking all those 8MP photos you are never going to make into posters), you just highlight all of the photos in explorer and then right click one of them and click resize. It will do them all the same way. Best tool out there for photo people.

R said 6:21AM on 5-06-2008

The power toy is good, but Picture Resizer is 10x better. What you read in this article is just the tip of the iceberg. It can add commands to context menu of .jpg pictures and also *folders*, you can set custom name (that is displayed in the menu) and options for each command. Overwriting original is possible; if you wanted to have the resized pictures named xxx_(small).jpg, you can. You can adjust quality, you can change aspect ratio without distorting the shapes on the picture, it is super-fast (able to use multiple processor cores), you can keep EXIF block if you want, it can resize to given file size in kilobytes, it can sharpen images, it can generate custom reports, even html fragments if you wanted, you do not need to install anything and you can carry it on you USB anywhere (300kB!), it works not just on XP...just read the description on their web (granted, reading sucks ;-)).

Compared to this power, the MS Power Toy is just a toy and saying that it is the best tool for photo people only reveals that you did not even tried to use this tool ;-).

Metro said 7:15AM on 6-11-2008

My one objection to Picture Resizer is that it seems to only process JPGs and not GIFs.

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