crop/resize tool

September 8, 2005 3:12 AM

im looking for a free, and simple program to crop and resize photos, then optimize for the web.

im making a website for my sister in law which will require continued photo updates. Im doing this pretty much for free so Id rather be without the continued obligation of resizing/optimizing pictures years from now.

she is a n00b and really busy so it can't have a massive learning curve, or require too much time/effort.

suggestions?

posted by Tryptophan-5ht to computers & internet (12 comments total)

just found this thread recommending irfanview... which unfortunately fails the "free" rubric since this would be a commercial use.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 3:15 AM on September 8, 2005

Irfanview
posted by Pigpen at 3:17 AM on September 8, 2005

nevermind
posted by Pigpen at 3:18 AM on September 8, 2005

yep. Irfanview.
posted by gen at 3:45 AM on September 8, 2005

whoops- typed too quick. Sorry.
posted by gen at 3:45 AM on September 8, 2005

Mihov image resizer does what it claims to, and fairly quickly. Free.
posted by gleuschk at 4:14 AM on September 8, 2005

I tried Ifranview after the last post (that Pigpen mentioned) but found it quite clumsy and counter-intuitive.

I prefer Picasa -- very user-friendly as you'd expect from Google, and some great, simple features. (My only grumble is the slightly confusing file viewer.)
posted by londonmark at 4:20 AM on September 8, 2005

I'm going to assume you're using a windows machine but i'll mention that Mac OS X Tiger has those capabilities built in. You'll have to make a automator workflow to customize it how you want then poop it out as an application. Then just drag and drop the images to the app and presto chango
posted by sammich at 4:52 AM on September 8, 2005

I'll second the Picasa recommendation. VERY easy, and has a surprisingly "I'm feeling lucky" optimisation button that does a great job most of the time.

Cropping is a doddle too...
posted by snowgoon at 5:08 AM on September 8, 2005

Ive used irfanview in the past but only for lack of something better. Now something better exists - check out picasa 2, its so clean, tidy, easy to use and its free. I can not recommend it highly enough.

*i am not in anyway an affiliate of google.com.
posted by FidelDonson at 5:10 AM on September 8, 2005

Picasa. Unlike Tiger it's not built in, but unlike Tiger it works on 99% of the computers in existence. (And you don't need to write an automator workflow and then "poop it out" to make it do things first.)

Also, does a good job of exporting modified photos without overwriting the originals. Plus, very good at finding and indexing photos without modifying the original locations - visual preview of the images is much faster than the Windows internal thumbnail view.
posted by caution live frogs at 6:07 AM on September 8, 2005

picasa 2 ownzs....all the basic utlity of a image manipulation software, with a wicked cool file manager AND it lets you add captions to the JPEG headers, so they go with the files.
posted by cosmicbandito at 7:01 AM on September 8, 2005