I’m always on the lookout for image editing software, and had used the Faststone Image Viewer (see Worldstart tip here.) However, I never tried their Photo Resizer. With this, you can quickly convert the sizes or formats of single images or groups of images. While there are many other software applications available which will accomplish this goal, none that I’ve used, do it as easily and reliably as this free program. It also contains some basic editing tools, including rotating and cropping.
To download this software, click here, and you’ll see the FastStone Photo Resizer at the bottom of the page. Follow the directions and when the download is complete, a shortcut is sent to your desktop. Open the program and the first thing you’ll need to do is select the location of the images you want to convert. This is done by clicking on the drive in which your images are located. Then, click on the button to the right of the field above (in red).
This will open the Browse For Folder (Select Source Folder) window.
When you’ve selected the location, choose the image or images (left column) that you’d like to convert.
Click the Add button (upper right) and there it is. Now, you have to decide just what it is you’d like to do. You’ll find the tools in the lower right. In this case, I’m planning to resize this photo, so I’ve checked the box Use Advanced Options (Resize…). This brings up the Advanced Options button. Click on that, and the Advanced Options window opens. When the Resize box (this will be in the upper left) is checked several options appear. The other tabs across the top provide other editing choices.
You can choose to use a standard size from the menu, Pick a Standard Size, or do custom resizing.
When you’ve made your decision on output size, click OK. Then you’ll have to select an output location (where you want the resized or reformatted photos to be saved).
Click the Browse button and once again, the Browse For Folder (Select Output Folder) window opens. I’ve chosen to move the converted image to the folder named FastStone Test.
For this demonstration, the photo was resized, but image formats can be changed just as easily as they can be resized by selecting a format from the Output Format menu.
To test this software, I chose to resize 106 photos and selected a standard size from the menu. The process of resizing the 106 photos took less than 10 minutes. When I was finished, I compared the size of the folder that contained the original photos (250 MB) to the size of the folder that contained the resized photos (16.9 MB). If you upload photos to the web, this can be a real time (and space) saver.
Enjoy.
~Kevin