14 DAY TRIAL // Digital photography has been a part of our lives for quite some time now and many people take pictures almost on a daily basis. This may be the result of their job requirements or it can be a simple habit with fun being its main objective. Of course, pictures are taken in order to be seen by more than the author, shared with family and friends via the Internet or by any other means.
Sometimes the act of distributing photos using e-mails or similar methods requires a compact form in which the image files can be sent and received. Consequently, one can compress several pictures into a single archive to reduce the overall size of the picture set, but often this doesn't help too much when it comes to large numbers of digital images. The best solution in this case would be to rescale the photos to a smaller size so their physical dimension on the disc they are stored on also diminishes.
The task of resizing pictures can be accomplished in a variety of manners like altering the picture's height and width and/or saving the files to a different image format that offers a better compression. To do so, you need a graphics editor or dedicated software created exactly for this kind of job. Resize My Pictures fits in the latter category and offers a free alternative to more complex and powerful editing solutions.
This small utility comes with a simple drag and drop interface that will allow any user, regardless their skills in using a computer, to quickly change the size of digital photos. Resize My Pictures is able to work with single files as well as with whole folders and yield immediate results with no compromises in terms of output quality. The functions are clearly individualized, the preview window is generously reported to the main window's size and the options can be accessed and customized with great ease.
Once you've loaded a file, Resize My Pictures will instantly display the basic details related to that image: size, resolution and filename. In case you choose to work with an entire picture folder, this utility will also tell you how many photos are in that directory and enables you to browse it while showing a real time preview. The three main functions you are presented when modifying your pictures are “Resize Task”, “Resize Picture” and “Images Format”. These options will prove to be sufficient to help you give new dimensions to your digital photos.
The “Resize Task” feature will allow you to choose the type of rescale operation you want to perform while offering you two options, with a supplementary third one in the case of batch conversions. Thus, you can opt for resizing the images to one of the preset dimensions or inserting the exact proportions that will be used. The third option mentioned will let you manually input the width and height of the picture loaded, but unless you know exactly what you're doing, it's best to go with one of the default sizes.
When dealing with more than one photo, you have the alternative to resize them at once and divide all resolutions by the factor needed. It's important to know that the application automatically preserves the aspect ratio so there's no need for other adjustments in this respect. An interesting fact about this tool is that you can load pictures from several folders and keep the directory structure if you want by activating this particular function.
Resize My Pictures comes with a General Save Name feature designed to help you save multiple images with a name of your choice and with ascending numbers to differentiate them. The application is also capable of creating a so called “interval mapping file” that contains the original filename and the new filename with the selected location. Concerning the supported output formats, this utility supplies the most often used graphics extensions: JPG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG, TIFF and TIF. All that's left for you to do once you load the files and choose the task's details is to simply select the format that offers the best compression/quality ratio you are looking for.
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It is worth noting that during testing, the application crashed a few times when working with an entire image folder, but given the fact that the reviewed release is in Beta stage, these things are bound to happen.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
