The Wizard of Scale

This article is also available in Spanish: El mago de las escalas

Our pride and joy, the pictures we take with our digital cameras, are sometimes difficult to display and share because of their high quality and generous size. Rarely fitted to be uploaded on a website or sent as attachments, a bit more work may be required in order to turn them into proper sized images that can be transferred via the Internet to our distant contacts. Since everyone is busy and needs to spend a minimal amount of time in front of the computer to perform such tasks, it's imperative to find the kit that will make your life much easier by quickly accomplishing the job without cutting corners in terms of quality.

From the multitude of dedicated applications out there, you should first check out those that are free of cost because it's impossible not to discover one that can change the dimensions and even the file type if the originals come in a less common format. Of course, there is no sorcery involved, but you could need something like Photo Magician. This is a piece of software you won't have to pay a cent for, meaning it is able and willing to help you for free.

As soon as you install and start it for the first time, you'll notice that it puts practicality above all. The interface is very much function-oriented, providing you with quick access to all the commands right from the main window. There are no eye-candy elements, not even the minimize and maximize buttons, just a few icons (that look pretty good, actually) and a sleek hat, which acts as a drop box that you will find if you decide to activate and use the ''Quick Convert Mode.''

With this utility, you can get right down to business and select the input and output folders for the images that will be re-scaled. Next in line is the profile you wish to employ and there's a long list for you to choose from because Photo Magician comes with no less than 25 of them, all ready for use right out of the box. If you don't see something you like in there, just create a custom one with the help of the ''Profile Editor.'' This function opens a window where you can define and store dimension sets by entering the precise values for width and height or the percentage you want the photos to be scaled by.

To further personalize the conversion, you can now move into the ''Options'' area and customize the application's behavior. You will be able to choose having all the subfolders of a directory included in the processing job. Just as well, by checking a box, you can have the original digital pictures overwritten by the resized ones that will be saved in the same location as the source files. The software comes with a preview function designed to show you the currently converted picture when the task is started. However, it can be turned off; thusly, you may gain some time because the operation will run a bit faster. Another function you can put to good use is that allowing you to exclude some images based on a certain size you select.

When it comes to the supported formats, Photo Magician can read a dozen and save up to five, perhaps the most widely used: BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG and TIF. This utility handles special kinds of pictures like RAW images, DDS, PCX, PSD, TARGA, WBMP and WMF. They can be individually configured to the extent that you can assign a different output type to each. Obviously, you will be able to keep the initial format of the files in case you simply want to give them new dimensions. In case you opt for the minimal mode, quick convert, all you need to do is change the output directory if necessary and simply drag and drop onto the hat the items that will receive new proportions.

Once the configurations are settled, it's time to unleash the processing power that will get things done in a flash. For a batch of 279 pictures that cumulated 23 MB, it took exactly 2 minutes to convert them and with the preview off, it was all over 5 seconds sooner. On a more consistent set of 94 MB with fewer photos, only 66, the timer stopped after 60 seconds. The system used for testing featured an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 1.90 GHz processor and 2GB or RAM. The stress on resources was average, with a peak of 50 percent for CPU and 26 MB of memory put to work. It's worth mentioning here that you have the possibility to stop the running task anytime you want from the same window that displays the image preview and the summarized real-time information about the active job.

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