Reducing image size

Badlad

Badlad

Administrator
Staff member
Hi all

I've a friend who keeps emailing photos that are around 9-10Mbs which are straight from the camera.  As they are only for a quick peak I keep suggesting he finds a way to reduce the size first.  I used Photoshop Elements years ago to bulk reduce files of photos to a standard reasonable size, but that programme costs.  Nowadays my mobile phone does it on request and Pegasus has some sort of programme that came with her camera.

Is there any free software which does the job that I can recommend to my friend.  I'll probably get him to enter the photo competition on here then  ;)  Cheers
 
Bob Mehew

Bob Mehew

Well-known member
I favour FastStone Image Viewer 6.5 at http://www.faststone.org/download.htm, as it not only does size reduction but a range of other simple manipulations such as crop, clone, red eye and adjust lighting, colour, brightness and many more features.  It opens to give you an icon view of your photos in a folder structure with full screen option of any selected photo.  It will also do batch work if you have a group of photos to work on.  All are presented as simple actions. 

I suspect GIMP is not what you are looking for but that can do much of what Photoshop does for free.  It also has  steep learning curve.
 
Tommy

Tommy

Active member
I sometimes use a little piece of software for Windows for putting things on the forum:

https://www.bricelam.net/ImageResizer/

To use it you just right click the image or selection of images in question, click "Resize Pictures", and off you go.

Very simple solution and does not require loading a full-blown program which views the images.

Highly recommended for ease of use.
 
Tseralo

Tseralo

Active member
If they are just for previews you can upload them to imgur and create a unlisted gallery.

I wouldnt recommend giving images to clients like that as the quality takes a hit.
 
I

Ian Ball

Well-known member
I very much like the Brice Lam program, I think it is very good, only thing I would prefer is a chance to resize all the contents of a folder rather than having to select all in the folder, if that makes sense.
 
teabag

teabag

New member
I use pixresizer, a free download. Very basic interface but super easy to use with one photo or a folder.
 
Tommy

Tommy

Active member
One thing that is lacking (in my brief search to find a piece of software like Brice Lam's) is something simple that can target a desired filesize, i.e. the limit for the forum (this is the only place I resize images for). So some trial and error can be required to balance image size and quality.

I'm sure you could do some maths to work it out, though you'd need to know how JPG compression works among other things!

I have recently started using my old Flickr account: https://www.flickr.com/gp/81064627@N08/0d1H87, and have quite a backlog to sort through and upload the best from the last 2 years.
 
Tseralo

Tseralo

Active member
Topimo said:
I'm sure you could do some maths to work it out, though you'd need to know how JPG compression works among other things!
Click to expand...

The maths for that would be so complex it?s probably easier to write code that brute forces it. Set a upper file size limit compress your file if above the limit throw it away and increase the compression. Keep going till you can?t compress any more or your bellow the limit.
 
G

grahams

Well-known member
Irfanview does that and lots besides - it has useful presets for common image sizes. This free software consists of a basic package plus a whole pile of free plugins which transform the software into a comprehensive photo editor.
 
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