As digital cameras keep increasing the resolution -- and size! -- of digital pictures, and as pictures become more and more an integral part of the lives of Realtors, home inspectors, and others, if they haven't already, we increasingly need a way to manage the size of the digital picture files taking up space on our computers. And we won't even talk about digital video and audio files.

PROBLEM: A few months ago I bought a new computer running Windows Vista. A few weeks ago we got a new digital SLR camera, a Canon Rebel XSi. On our old Windows XP computer, we had a batch processor for reducing picture size that, unfortunately, doesn't run on Windows Vista. The new Canon Rebel XSi camera takes pictures that are, for the most part, sizable, huge, gigantic, big, Tom Hanks, monster, collosal, enormous, humongous, and mammoth.  

SOLUTION FOR WINDOWS XP: Go to Microsoft's web site and download their Image Resizer. It's one of their Windows XP Power Toys. Once you download it and install it, all you have to is select the pictures you want to resize, right click on them, choose your options, and click on okay. I've done as many as 500 pictures in just one minute. Here's the link for Windows XP Image Resizer. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen. On the right side, five from the bottom, is the link to Image Resizer. Download, install, and batch-process away!

SOLUTION FOR WINDOWS VISTA: Windows XP Image Resizer is not available for Vista. Fortunately, someone has come to the rescue. AND IT'S FREE! That someone is VSO Software! It's only slightly -- very slightly -- less elegant than Windows XP Image Resizer because the FREE download is for personal use and it reminds you of that each time you right click on your pictures to resize them. If you choose to buy the commercial program, it's regularly $25 but is on sale right now for $15. For you professional photographers, VSO's Image Resizer also handles the RAW format from Canon (CR2), Nikon (NEF), and Minolta (MRW), as well as many other formats. VSO's Image Resizer also works under Windows 2000 and Windows XP in case you have multiple computers running different operating systems.

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15 Comments on FREE Windows 2000, XP, and Vista programs for reducing the size of your pictures

JUN
12
2009
867,011 Points 18 Featured Posts Localism Sponsor Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

What great tips and I wish I had known about these things a lot time ago.  The photo is grea! It certainly inspires.
9:04pm • #1
222,924 Points Outside Blog Attended Rain Camp

I use IrfanView to resize and even to write over your pictures if you need to.
9:05pm • #2
655,247 Points 29 Featured Posts Localism Sponsor Outside Blog Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

Russell, There's nothing better than FREE.  I'm with Joan on this.  After getting my new laptop I was in a quandary because my Photoshop no longer worked with Vista.  I ended up getting paintshop to re-size my photos.  Our Canon Rebel XTi makes those Tom Hanks, BIG size photos also.
9:41pm • #3
222,333 Points 9 Featured Posts

Russel,

I load all the listing photos into my machine and then email them to myself with outlook.  It let's me specifiy the size of the images and then I just highlight them all and copy and paste them right back into a folder labeled "small" for loading on my website.
9:52pm • #4
454,618 Points 15 Featured Posts Called Shot Master

Russel, that's a great find - thanks! So many programs don't work with Vista that it's almost like starting over.
10:11pm • #5
1 Featured Post

I didn't even know I needed to resize my photos :-)

Thanks for the information.

Does it work on video, too. Because that's where I need it most. --- Oh, I guess I could check it out, huh!
10:28pm • #6

Hey, Joan - I discovered XP's Image Resizer many years ago courtesy of a home inspector in Kentucky, but I sure have missed it the last few months working on this Vista computer. It wasn't critical with my old digital camera doing home inspections work, but wanting professional quality with my Canon Rebel XSi is a different story. A single high quality picture can be as much as 15,000 MB. That's huge. I want to save most of the pictures at professional quality, but not at that size.

Hey, Nancy - I didn't like IrfanView when I tried it several years ago, so I didn't give it a chance during this latest round. Maybe it's better now.

Hey, Marchel - I see you caught the Tom Hanks "Big" reference. My old Photoshop 5.5 works with Vista, which made me happy. I only had one problem with Vista, with an old scanner, but downloading new Vista drivers solved that problem quickly.

Hey, Brian - I had tried emailing a couple of times but just found it too cumbersome. Maybe because I'm still using AOL? LOL

Hey, Maria - That's what I had heard, which is why I delayed so long before buying a Vista computer. However, I have not found that to be true.

Hey, Andrew - I've never used photos in my home inspection that are more than 640x480 and one megapixels. Just never needed any better resolution than that. That size in the camera creates pictures that are about 150 KB, but resizing them creates 35 KB pictures. That's a significant savings in disk space when one takes 200 pictures per inspection, two inspections per day, seven days a week.
10:59pm • #7
425,063 Points 22 Featured Posts Outside Blog

Russel - that 's great news. I have Vista and it has started to slow down I have been manually making the pics smaller, some of them I wanted to keep larger and uploaded to flickr. Then I realized I already had a 500gig external hard drive so now they are automatically imported there from the camera. ~Rita
11:00pm • #8
1,157,930 Points 38 Featured Posts Localism Sponsor Outside Blog Called Shot Master

Russel, I will be upgrading to Vista in the not too distant future and will be needing this advice.  My pictures come out HUGE as you said but they told me to leave them for best resolution.  I went back 2 or 4 pages to look for your post about the house so I could read it....and can't find it.  I would love to see it and will check back here to see if you can post a link or send it to me?  Thank you!
11:12pm • #9
JUN
13
2009
465,957 Points 9 Featured Posts Called Shot Master

Great advice Russell and I have Vista and size tons of pics. <SMILE>
3:44pm • #10

Hey, Carole - It's over here: http://activerain.com/blogsview/1106212/the-house-i-want-to-inspect-but-i-m-not-qualified
7:22pm • #11
192,861 Points

Hi Russel,

Thanks for sharing this great info...it's been bookmarked.
9:27pm • #12
JUN
14
2009
1,352,557 Points 42 Featured Posts Outside Blog Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

Thank you for this tip.  I've been using Picnik, but it can be unwieldy to have to upload make changes, save, etc.
11:33am • #13
JUN
18
2009

thank you so much. I have adobe photoshop and I hate it.
4:20pm • #14

Free is good.  I have photoshop on my desktop, but my laptop has cheapware!  This may indeed come in handy if I have to do some shrinking quick.  Thanks for sharing.
7:46pm • #15


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Jim Frimmer, Realtor and CDPE, Mission Valley, CA DRE #01458572

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