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.
Squash is the easiest batch image resizing tool we've ever seen. It's certainly not the most customizable, but it's cross-platform and dead simple to use.
Here's how it works. You download and unzip the executable application for Windows, Mac, or Linux. Choose your output directory, add some files, and choose your resizing options. When you click resize, Squash will spit out your new images in your output folder in no time flat.
We kind of wish you could tell Squash to resize all of your images so that they're 200 pixels wide. But you can't. Instead, it lets you shrink or blow up your images by percentages. So if you had a 400 pixel image and a 200 pixel image and you want to cut them both in half, you'll wind up with a 200 pixel and a 100 pixel image. But the program is open source, so if anyone has some free time on their hands and wants to add our dream feature, we'd love you forever. Or at least write an update.
Do you have some programs that just don't look right on your monitor's 1920 x 1200 pixel display? You could manually adjust the resolution every time you want to run an old video game or other applications that calls for a lower resolution. Or you could use Res-o-matic to create a program shortcut that automatically changes your screen resolution before launching the program.
Res-o-matic couldn't be much easier to use. The program is a tiny (9KB) executable file that has just a handful of options. You find choose the application you want to create a shortcut for, choose a screen resolution, refresh rate, and color depth, and Res-o-matic spits out a new shortcut.
We've been playing with an Asus Eee PC for the last few months, and we have to say one of the most useful features on this tiny laptop with a low resolution screen is the fact that you can drag windows by pressing Alt+left click. Since the Eee PC has a non-standard 800 x 480 pixel display, many programs have windows that are too large to fit on the display. Fortunately, you can use the Alt+left click tool to drag them around the screen.
This feature is present in many popular Linux distributions, but if you've got a Windows machine with a low resolution screen, you need a 3rd party applaction like WinMover to achieve the same results. WinMover is a lightweight, customizable app that lets you move windows by clicking anywhere, not just on the top of the window.
You can also resize windows without clicking their edges. Just hit Alt+right click and drag your mouse. Want to save your Alt button for something else? WinMover lets you customize your button combinations for various actions.
Here's a neat little trick we picked up from Lifehacker. Since you can adjust a number of settings in Firefox by typing commands into the URL field, it turns out you can also adjust settings by saving those commands as bookmarks.
Say you want to create a bookmark or a bookmarklet for your toolbar that will let you resize your browser window. Just right click on your toolbar and select "New Bookmark."
A window will pop up allowing you to set a name, description, and location Just enter the following into the location field " javascript:window.resizeTo(800,600);" but leave out the quotation marks.
Change the numbers to set your default resolution. Now you can easily switch between full screen and windowed mode at the click of a button. If you want to see how a website looks at different screen resolutions, you can create a series of these bookmarks.
What other Firefox settings adjustments would you automate by creating a bookmark?
Every once in a while I get a pop-up window in Firefox and the window is a weird size, cutting off a lot of text, images and even buttons that I need to click on. Some times this window can be resized by just clicking and dragging at the corner of the window, but other times the window cannot be resized at all. I recently found out that some of the windows that are popping up in weird sizes because I have too many add-ons. Some add-ons add icons to the bottom bar of the Firefox browser and some pop-up windows can't handle all of them, and that is where ResizeIT is there to help me.
ResizeIT is a quick and easy way for resizing any window, regardless if it can be resized by clicking and dragging or not. With just the click of Alt + 1-4, depending on what size you need. Flipping through the different sizes does not effect what is in the window at all. So if you are commenting in a Google blog in a pop-up window it will not erase any text you already entered.
QuickThumbnail is an extremely pared-down online service offering the ability to upload an image and resize, then download the resulting file. Uploaded photos and their resulting copies are kept on the server for only 10 minutes as a security precaution. Resizing options include resizing based on a percentage of the original image's size, using one of a set of fixed sizes, or resizing my a set of "standard" sizes, for example 100x75 for an avatar, or 468x60 for a web banner.
Luckily 250 pixels wide is one of the set values available, so I used QuickThumbnail to make a thumbnail of their own image, and use it in this post, seen at the right. The image quality seems very reasonable, and the process took mere seconds. In fact, I may find myself using this site for more images in my posts, considering how drop-dead simple it is.
QuickThumbnail
