Resizing a batch of photos

August 17, 2006 9:45 AM

Is there an easy way to resize a batch of photos in Windows Explorer? This looked promising, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't work. I'm sick of opening every picture individually!
posted by Maia to Computers & Internet (17 answers total)

I haven't actually tried this program... But some of my freeware pages that I've got bookmarked point to this software and this software.
posted by lucidreamstate at 9:50 AM on August 17, 2006

You don't mention what flavor of Windows you are using, but if it's XP, you need, need, need the Image Resizer powertoy available for free from Microsoft.
posted by ewagoner at 9:53 AM on August 17, 2006

I've done a lot of research and trial and error and the must have tool is FastStone Image Resizer. It's the best of the best freeware!
posted by bleucube at 9:53 AM on August 17, 2006

Not quite what it was intended for, but you could use JAlbum.

It's really a (fairly nice) freeware app for creating web-based photo albums, but the options allow you to set varying image sizes. (IE, it will create thumbnails for a main page of the album. Clicking on a thumbnail would lead to a 'mid-size' image (which is what you can control) and then clicking on that midsize image would lead you to the original sized image.

I'd just create an album and then pull the midsize images out (if memory serves all 'size levels' are stored in a single folder together, so you'd have all output files in the size you want in a single output folder.
posted by MarkLark at 10:02 AM on August 17, 2006

Well, in the Linux world, you'd be wanting Imagemagick, which is also available for Windows. I run this command all the time:

mogrify -resize 640x480 *.jpg

And presto, all the jpegs in that directory are now 640x480. Imagemagick is ludicrously powerful at other sorts of automated image manipulation as well.
posted by jellicle at 10:06 AM on August 17, 2006

I second Jellicle. I didn't even think about ImageMagick. It's available for Windows environments too, but it's command-line driven so you'll need to drop to DOS and run the mogrify command.

There may be GUI plugins for it but probably aren't necessary.
posted by MarkLark at 10:15 AM on August 17, 2006

I was going to come here and recommend Image Resizer, the powertoy from Microsoft, but I see ewagoner did already, so I'll second that recommendation. Essentially it allows you to select a group of photos in Explorer, right click and select a new size for them.

You don't have to open up any special programs or do anything like that, perfect for batch resizing like this.
posted by KirTakat at 10:49 AM on August 17, 2006

I use irfanview for my image viewer on windows, and it can do batch resizing as well.

http://www.irfanview.com/
posted by escher at 11:01 AM on August 17, 2006

i second irfanview its batch conversion is FANTASTIC
posted by moochoo at 11:02 AM on August 17, 2006

Picture Tray, you just drag and drop, tho be careful, for some reason the new, smaller files are deleted when you exit the program, so move them before you do.
posted by Orange Goblin at 11:05 AM on August 17, 2006

XNview does this with either an excellent gui or with the command line tool NConvert
posted by Mitheral at 11:07 AM on August 17, 2006

I second FastStone. It's freeware and batch resizing is one of the many features the program has.
posted by beammeup4 at 1:18 PM on August 17, 2006

ACDSee?
posted by antifuse at 1:29 PM on August 17, 2006

I recently had to do this on Windows 2000 and ended up using the export function in Picasa
posted by jacobsee at 3:15 PM on August 17, 2006

Count me as an Irfanview supporter too. Freeware, and it will display anything, and does batch resizing, thumbnails, etc.
posted by stovenator at 3:48 PM on August 17, 2006

I 4th Irfanview. I've used it for more than 5 years.
posted by special-k at 4:42 PM on August 17, 2006

I'll third Image Resizer. Works fine, simple, clean, and you don't need have yet another app on the desktop.
posted by tdtd at 6:20 PM on August 17, 2006