Resize Your Images - Save the Planet !

Not to mention sitting around waiting for images to upload to your site - whether by FTP or directly through the Content Editor Panel.

Save time! Save resources! Save money!

Download the Microsoft Image Resizer PowerToy (horrible term!) using the link here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/Downloads/powertoys/Xppowertoys.mspx

The link is to all the powertoys - scroll down the screen and select ImageResizer from the right margin.

Instructions for use of the Image Resizer are here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/learnmore/tips/eschelman2.mspx

Once installed on your machine it will run as any other programme.

How do you use it? Simple.

1) Find the image you want to use for your website.
2) Right click on the image.
3) Select Resize Image
4) Choose the size you want to resize to - Small is default.

The tool will then copy and reduce the size of the image it copies, storing it in the same folder as the full size image (but with a different name).

Select as many at a time as you like - but move them to a new folder to work on them (see below) or you will quickly be seeing stars! Your head will swirl and you may even fall off your chair!

Down-side! The image name will have spaces and brackets - not good!

You are advised to rename the image (all lowercase, letters or numbers, hyphen or underscore, but no spaces or upper case letters).

Which size to choose?

You choose!

We recommend Small (640 x 480 px) for use in image rotators and image galleries (where images expand on screen when selected) and Handheld (240 x 320px) for general use.

We often save two different size copies of each image we use for this reason.

If you start with a typical image taken on your personal camera it may be 3.5 MB in size. This will reduce to 37 KB (Small) and 11 KB (Handheld) !

Save time by planning ahead. Avoid resizing and renaming images you do not plan to use. If you need to edit an image - do it first!

You could of course change your camera settings but then you would not have images that will give you good prints. The resize tool is very useful!

Now upload to your site - how to do this for lots of images at one go? See our next post!

Other questions?

Which image format is best? Which tools are best to use to edit an image? Watch this space!

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