Resizing Photos is Easy With PhotoRazor
A Simple, Useful Photo Resizer for Blogs, Email and Websites
Oct 5, 2009
It's surprising how many people don't have a clue about how to resize pictures before they send them by email. They might understand that the images they want to send are big files, which could be a nuisance to download – but they think: what can they do?
With a shrug and crossed fingers, they send them anyway, hoping that they won't crash a friend's system.
PhotoRazor – Photo Cropping Without Pain
Technically, PhotoRazor doesn't actually crop photos (which means that a specific section of the original photo is cut out and kept); rather, it resizes them. The whole photo is intact: it's just smaller. It can be made smaller in two ways:
- the actual measurements (in pixels) and
- in quality (the number of dots per inch)
As far as free picture resizers go, this is a good one. It's popular because of its ease of use: its sole purpose is to compress photos. It therefore doesn't include photo editing functions, with the exception of a photo rotation button and another that allows pictures to be saved in sepia (which is a nice touch).
How PhotoRazor Photo Resizing Software Works
Once PhotoRazor is installed, the user follows a simple series of steps to compress the photos.
Step One: Select the Photos. To do this, locate the folder containing the photos to be resized by clicking the 'Choose Folder' button at the top of the left hand column. This opens the usual directory tree on the user's computer. Click on the folder containing the photos and click 'open'. The photos will be imported into PhotoRazor, and will be visible in the right-hand column.
Step Two: Size and Quality. Making a choice of the finished size and quality for the compressed photos couldn't be easier. There are two sliders to determine this: one is "Maximum Height and Width"; the other is 'Picture Quality'. By moving the sliders, the user can see how the finished picture will look (exact size and quality). The width/height is determined by the longest side of the photo.
At the top of the screen, the file size of the photo is shown as the sliders are moved. This is really handy when resizing a photo, say, for a social networking site that has photo file size limits. When the user is satisfied with the appearance of the reduced photos, it's time for the final step.
Step Three: Resize and Save the Photos. At this step it's possible to either resize all photos in the folder (known as a batch resize) or to just resize and save selected photos (by pressing the CTRL key and clicking on the images required). The photos will be saved in a subfolder entitled 'small_photos' inside the original photo folder. The original photos remain untouched.
Added Functions: Rotate Photos or Save in Black and White
Photo rotation or conversion to black and white are the only editing functions that PhotoRazor provides – and for most people, this is fine: there are plenty of other photo editing programs around. PhotoRazor mainly provides a quick and easy way of resizing photos.
The black/white button and the photo rotation buttons are at the bottom of the software screen. The black and white photo button allows the user to add a tint (for example, a brown tint provides a sepia photo).
Recognised Photo Image Files
PhotoRazor will recognise and import the following picture files: .jpg,.png,.gif and .bmp. However, it saves all resized images as .jpg files.
Just to be able to compress photos so easily to send by email is a boon, but anyone needing images in a small file size for a website, blog or social networking site will really appreciate the job PhotoRazor can do so quickly and easily.
One of the best features is being able to see the finished file size at the top of the screen while experimenting with different photo sizes and quality. It's a simple matter to adjust the quality or size to bring an image in below the required maximum size limits, so web pages will load quickly.
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