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Last week, I delved into the joys of Power Toys. The one I discussed was called
Tweak UI, but other Power Toys are available for free download here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp
One of my favorite toys is the Image Resizer. This little gem comes in handy
if you have a lot of digital photographs. With the Image Resizer, you can resize
one (or many) image files just by right-clicking the file name in Windows Explorer.
After you install the Image Resizer software, go to Windows Explorer. If you
right-click an image file, you'll notice that a new option has been added to
the pop-up menu: Resize Pictures. When you click it a dialog box appears filled
with options. You can choose to resize your image to one of four standard sizes
or choose your own size. You can either resize the original image or resize
a copy (and leave the original in tact).
As I mentioned, this Power Toy is incredibly useful if you have a digital camera.
I have a number of digital pictures (roughly a zillion or so). If I take a picture
at 2 megapixels, the photo tends to be about 700K - 800K. These sizes are way
too large to e-mail. (I mean it -- don't send 800K pictures unless you want
to really annoy people!)
To retain friendly e-mail relationships, I use Image Resizer to quickly shrink
my images. For example, I experimented with a picture of my cat. The original
photo is 789K. When I use the Resize Pictures command and resize it to the small
size, it's 49K. At the medium setting it is 76K, and using large, it's 121K.
Sure if I were going to put these photos on a Web site, I could (and should)
optimize the photos even further in Photoshop and make them really small for
online viewing. But for a quick e-mail, the Image Resizer is great.
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