Every now and then I find myself in the situation where I want to resize images to a defined size. To speed up the workflow I have created this simple application that supports drag-and-drop resizing. Just drag an image file onto the application icon and the image will be resized according to the settings.
The application requires .NET Framework 2.0. There is no installer. Just put the executable file wherever you want.
If the application is launched by itself it present the setting dialog, shown below.
The bounding box is the largest possible image that will be the result of the operation. If the “crop to box” option is set, the source image will be cropped to leave an image of the exact size of the bounding box. If, on the other hand, the “fit within box” option is selected the image will be made as large as possible with retained aspect ratio and still fit within the bounding box. The bounding box can be of any size and the cropping, if required, will be done from the centre.
A watermark text can be added to the finished image by enabling the watermark option and typing a suitable string in the edit box. The font or position of the watermark text can not be changed.
Images can be saved to the same folder as the source image or to a defined target folder and will be given a suffix of “_resized”. The application will add extra numbers at the end to avoid overwriting existing files. If required, the metadata associated with the source image can be copied over to the resulting image.
To avoid having to keep the application on the desktop or somewhere else where it is readily available you can do the following:
- Put the application (resizer.exe) anywhere you want on your hard drive
- Right-click on any image file and select “Open with…” followed by “Choose program…”
- Make sure the “Always use the selected program…” checkbox is unchecked and browse for the application file
- Press OK
Windows will remember the application you selected for the jpeg files and will include the Resizer application on the “Open with…” submenu. The next time you want to resize a file you just have to pick the Resizer option from the “Open with…” submenu.
The resizing is done using bicubic with the highest quality setting. If I get around to it I will implement support for “unsharp mask”.
License
This application is provided free of charge for personal use. If you like it I would appreciate if you would link to my web site (http://www.spotwise.com).
Uninstallation
Just remove the EXE file and all registry settings under HKCU\Software\Bergek\Resizer.
If you added the application as a short cut under the right-click context menu you can remove the application in the registry under the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ FileExts \ .jpg \ OpenWithList. As always, be careful when editing the registry.
