Help me resize digital photos!

June 12, 2007 5:22 AM

What's the best way to resize 400 digital pictures?

There must be a program out there that lets me easily resize a large batch of pictures. Does iPhoto have this capability?

Any suggestions that are Mac OSX-friendly are greatly appreciated!

posted by kmtiszen to computers & internet (17 comments total)

Adobe Photoshop will allow you to resize them using Automator or a droplet...
posted by SpecialK at 5:24 AM on June 12, 2007

Picasa will let you resize them in batch using the "export" functionality. It's free and there are a bunch of helpful step-by-stop how-to guides out there.
posted by KevCed at 5:30 AM on June 12, 2007

Oops, Picasa doesn't have OSX functionality yet. Sorry.
posted by KevCed at 5:30 AM on June 12, 2007

ImageMagick. Use "fink" to install it.

$ for sourcefile in *.jpg; do
     convert -resize 800x800 ${sourcefile} resized-$sourcefile
done

http://www.imagemagick.org/script/command-line-processing.php
http://www.finkproject.org/download/index.php?phpLang=en
posted by cmiller at 5:36 AM on June 12, 2007

Apple's Automator supports resizing of images using either the "Scale Images" or "Crop Images" actions.
posted by RichardP at 5:48 AM on June 12, 2007

Photoshop is easy to use for this. Create an action that resizes, saves, and closes. Then go to automate>batch>then select the resize action...
posted by chuckdarwin at 5:55 AM on June 12, 2007

Just had a look at Automator (comes free with OS X) and all you need to do is put.. 1. Get Specified Finder Items, 2. Copy Finder Items, and 3. Scale Images (as RichardP says). That'll then let you specify the images, then it'll copy them, resize them and save them back out.
posted by wackybrit at 5:55 AM on June 12, 2007

Chuckdarwin, photoshop actually has a batch routine - called "image processor" which does exactly what is needed. You can save the image at its original location, or save somewhere else, or even with a modified name.

I use it to put all my megamegabyte photoshop files into something Flickr doesn't choke on.
posted by notsnot at 6:12 AM on June 12, 2007

If you are not explicitly ties to OSX then MS has a built-in tool (which you can find here) that lets you right click on one or many files or even many folders and then select from a few presets (like small, med, large etc) or click advanced and pick your own resolutions, settings etc... it is fantastic, fast and easy. if you have a windows machine floating around, just transfer the files, resize and move back...
posted by chasles at 6:43 AM on June 12, 2007

For windows, here's a free and easy solution: irfanview. It is packed with features, including batch conversion for resizing, renaming, converting, etc.
Mac's can run Windows nowadays, right? :- )
posted by bodega at 7:09 AM on June 12, 2007

As for the iPhoto solution you asked about, you can simply load them all into iPhoto, select them all, and click File-Export. Then you can choose the maximum size of the longest dimension.
posted by themadjuggler at 7:18 AM on June 12, 2007

iPhoto does have this ability. Select the images in question, go to Share>Export… and then select File Export. You can select the destination file size there.

FWIW, I'm a fan of GraphicConverter for this kind of thing, which has much more powerful batch-mode tools. But you've already got iPhoto, and it'll do what you need.
posted by adamrice at 7:23 AM on June 12, 2007

ViewIt will do it.

You can also do it with some QuickSilver trickery. Highlight images in finder, Apple-Escape, resize, type in percentage, enter.
posted by unixrat at 7:23 AM on June 12, 2007

Consider imagemagick heartily seconded. It's also supported on a number of platforms. I use it for, among other things, creating thumbnails: convert -geometry x100 and you get thumbs 100px tall with their original aspect ratio preserved.
posted by mce at 8:15 AM on June 12, 2007

Microsoft has a selection of downloads called "powertoys" they have an app called image resizer that once installed lets you right click on an image or group of images and resize to what ever size you want while maintaining proportions - you can even overwrite the originals if you want.
posted by unsurmountable at 10:40 AM on June 12, 2007

Seconding adamrice, with linky: you've got the answers you need here already, but if you find yourself getting into a lot of batch processing, you might want to look into downloading GraphicConverter.
posted by Orinda at 3:02 PM on June 12, 2007

Actually, I've just realized Automator is far easier than I imagined.. Just dump your images in a folder on the desktop, right click on that folder, and choose "Automator".. then just add the Scale Images action and you're done. No downloads, no installing anything, it's a core OS X tool.
posted by wackybrit at 3:53 PM on June 12, 2007