Picture Resizer 1.0 - RealWorld forums

I just tried Picture Resizer, thinking it might be an easy to use tool for resizing digital photo images for efficient streaming to a high definition television display. My display has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. This requires a typical 4:3 "landscape" aspect image to be resized to 1440 x 1080 to fit the display, and a 3:4 "portrait" image to be resized to 810 x 1080.

The program works for this purpose, but I found two problems. One is a serious bug and the other points to an improvement that would make this utility nearly perfect for this application.

First, when I drag a folder containing images to PhotoResize1440.exe it not only resizes the image files in the folder to 1440x1080, but it resizes the newly created resized images, and resizes those resized images, etc., etc., until there are dozens of copies of each image. Apparently there is bug that causes the program not to limit processing to the files that were originally in the folder but rather to loop through all the image files that the program itself creates.

Second, for the purpose I described, it would be much handier to have an option that controls the resizing to the height, rather than the width. i.e., PhotoResizeH1080.exe instead of PhotoResize1440.exe. This way all images, whether portrait or landscape could be resized to a height of 1080 pixels without disturbing the aspect ratio. The existing option of PhotoResizeWxH.exe would require separating landscape and portrait images before processing.

Thankyou for developing this program and making it available. I hope that you can devote a little work to it so that it can meet it's full potential.

Thanks for your feedback, it is much appreciated.
The bug was fixed and the suggested enhancement is sensible and was implemented.
Description of the changes is on the PhotoResizer 1.1 homepage.

Vlasta,

I appreciate the very prompt response. However I found that the 1.1 code still requires some tweaking.

1. The recursive processing still occurs. This happens only when I drag a *folder* to the program icon, not when I drag a group of files.

2. The PhotoResizeWwwww option works as intended (which is the same as the original PhotoResizexxxx. However, the option that I need, PhotoResizeHhhhh does not work properly. I found this parameter resized the image exactly the same as the "W" option. i.e., 4:3 aspect images processed with *both* PhotoResizeH1080 and PhotoResizeW1080 were regenerated at 1080W x 808H. The PhotoResizeH1080 should produce an image that is 1440W x 1080H.

I would very much appreciate it if you could address these bugs.

Also, if you feel inclined to refine this application a little more once the bugs are fixed, here are two additional thoughts.

1. I have not tested dragging a folder which contains subfolders. You might want to consider an option that would specify whether subfolders are to be processed.

2. Also, while I believe that your intention is to provide a simple utility, which I applaud, ideally there could be an option to name a separate output folder for the processed images.

Again, thank you very much for your efforts.

I had a thought that might explain why the bug fix and change do not appear to be working for me. Could it be that the file at the download link for version 1.1 is actually still version 1.0? I ran a file compare utility which says that both of the files I downloaded are identical.

...and when I check the properties of the "new" file, which downloads as PhotoResize400-1.exe, I find that the version number is 1.0.0.1, which is identical to the version of the original PhotoResize400.exe that I downloaded yesterday.

This is strange, I know for sure, there is an updated version on the server. Maybe the old version is still in your Internet Explorer cache. I guess, removing the file from cache explicitly, clearing the cache, or using for example Firefox for downloading should help.

Regarding the new suggestions:

1. It would be easy to implement. Actually it is already there, but it is disabled. I thought the added value for a typical user is negligible and it makes the interface more complicated (do they know what "recursive" means ?).
BTW it is possible to drag and drop multiple folders at once. Maybe that would do it in your case. If not I can re-enable it, but I would like to keep it as an undocumented feature.

2. Simplicity vs flexibility is always the problem. There is no configuration right now, therefore the output folder would need to be hardcoded (for example "thumbnails" in the same directory where the app is). And there could be a problem when there are files with same names in different folders.

I will need to think about these features for a while before I implement them...

Well I have been using Firefox for the downloads. Will try clearing it's cache.

...Yes. Now I have the true 1.1 file. Initial test = works as advertised! Thanks.

Will experiment with subfolders, etc. and let you know if I notice anything else of interest. One folder at a time is probably fine as I will have to manually move the resized files to a separate folder anyway to best suit my purposes. I understand your reservations about further features. Thanks for what you have already provided. It is simple and effective.

...I will eventually implement the new features, but I'd like to think about them for some time to minimize potential damage...

jleslie48 (2005-11-07): what a product. so nice to see a KISS (keep it simple) program that is so usefull and pinpoint accurate to what it should be doing. I like the "rename the program name" parameter list, being an old command line programmer I know exactly where this comes from, although having command line parameters would be more flexible, (eg, "$photoresize -p400 -r -c -dc:\picturedirectory") but hardly really worth changing just for that. The only reason I bring it up is a request for one additional feature, rather than just a fixed target size, I'd like to see a percentage target size, like say 50%. The reason I bring this up is because my application was for conversion of jpgs that were scale drawings, all of which were scaled the same, but unfortunately the size of each image (widthxlength) were different. Using this program worked great to reduce all the images to a constant size, but as a result all the blueprints were no longer in scale with each other. I had to increase the borders of all the images to the same as the largest jpg, before I could run this program to get it all correct. Just a wish list item. The product is great.

I'd like to make a cash donation, is this possible??

I'm also a C programmer and have a wonderfull template for parameter passing from the command line that I use all the time, if you would like to see it, I can supply a sample.

Sincerely,

Jon, NYC

Thanks for your feedback!

The application employs renaming instead of command line parameters to allow the "drag and drop" usage from Windows Explorer.

It is of course possible to also implement command line parameters that would override the "name parameters". Is there a use case that requires this feature?

Resizing to a size relative to the original sounds good, it will be added in the next version.

Thanks for feedback, since you are not first one to ask this feature, it will be included in the next version.

-r should work with the shortcut trick just fine. Just be sure, that the shortcut references the right app => that means create the shortcut after you add R to the filename, or change the referenced file afterwards.

thankx Vlasta, but the -r seams not to work with the schrtcut for me (win2k system).. nevermind that's not a problem for me, wrote a batch file
i got a error on a bunch of jpg b/w format files
one example can be found here http://g.divisionbyzero.be/temp/banken1.JPG
in case you want to check it out
greetz,
polossatik (at the well known google mail extension)

B&W jpegs are not supported in the current version (trying to keep the size of the tool as small as possible), but I will consider it in the future update

I downloaded the 400.exe, but i found the same prog unde the name of 800exe.. What is the difference between these ? And wich shout i use ?
Geatings

The name of the tool controls the size of the output image and possibly other options as described on the main page. You have probably downloaded the 800.exe from some other website, it is OK to use it, but be aware that it may not be the latest version.

Great tool! I think it has been asked above, but I would also like to be able to resize a file in a dir and keep the name. What I want to do is copy the files out to another folder, using a batch script, and then rename, so my link in the database will know the correct file.

Thanks for this awesome tool!

Brilliantly simple, simply brilliant! I have one wish, earlier mentioned above - to keep the original filename, in other words overwrite the original files. You mentioned above that it will be included in the next version. Can you say when that will be?

Well, I can promise, there will be a new version before the end of April. This feature will be there as well as setting output quality. Maybe more.

I am a little confused regarding the resizing and the DPI. I have an image that is 205dpi and of size 2050x1540. I'd like to resize to 410x308 and maintain as much quality as possible.
I use the -q100 setting, and the -w410 setting, but this results in an image with 41dpi. Adding -d96 creates an image of 96dpi, but that is 960x721. What am I missing?

The main function of the application is to change the number of pixels, making the picture suitable for web publishing or archiving.

By default the tool is trying to preserve the physical dimensions of the picture by setting the dpi accordingly. What you see is just that.

Relatively many people request to be able to leave the pixels as they are and only set the dpi or vice versa. This will be one of the new options in the next version.

Hi there,
I tried to use FotoResizer as explained, but when trying to open it or drag a file to the icon I got the message that it is not a correct win32-application. My OS is XP-home. Any suggestions?

OK. My problem in previous message has been solved. Just downloaded the wrong version (from snapfiles.com, where it says that it suites 3 different win OS). Srry to have bothered you. It 's a real great tool! Thank you.