Multiresize.exe or CS2

[ruthnicholls]

Hello, I'm new to this Forum, I hope someone can help me with what i expect is terribly simple.

I am making a slide show, and have folders with jpgs in the right order, but they are not yet resized to 1280 x 960,landscape format, or 960 high by whatever, for portrait shots. I have downloaded Multiresize, but it seems you have to insert the width and the height box says auto. Well as I understand it, it is actually the height which is important to make sure the images fit on screen. How do you get to be able to insert the height and let the width be automatic? Failing that can you do an Action in PSCS2 that will cope with both formats in one Action?

Thanks so much for any help,

Ruth

[Ken Cox]

http://www.fookes.com/ezthumbs/

you can make the settings as you wish

or

http://irfanview.tuwien.ac.at/

will resize

you will have to experiment with both

ezthumbs makes backups -- renames the pict

example

1999 PLYMOUTH PROWLER.jpg

becomes

tn_1999 PLYMOUTH PROWLER.jpg

btw

Ruth

welcome to the forum

ken

[LumenLux]

I just happen to have seen yesterday a couple of simple tutorials from one of our members:

Re-sizing and batch processing in Photoshop and Elements

When resizing small numbers of photos, I like the results of Elements "resize for web". I would like to know if Elements or Photoshop offer that in batch mode?

[Conflow]

Hello, I'm new to this Forum, I hope someone can help me with what i expect is terribly simple.

I am making a slide show, and have folders with jpgs in the right order, but they are not yet resized to 1280 x 960,landscape format, or 960 high by whatever, for portrait shots. I have downloaded Multiresize, but it seems you have to insert the width and the height box says auto. Well as I understand it, it is actually the height which is important to make sure the images fit on screen. How do you get to be able to insert the height and let the width be automatic? Failing that can you do an Action in PSCS2 that will cope with both formats in one Action?

Thanks so much for any help,

Ruth

Hello Ruth,

Yes, there is an excellent Free-Ware Program called "PIXresizer" available from www.bluefive.pair.com which does exactly what you want...Batch Re-Sizing and all...

When you open the Web-Page its about half way down within the Script, its about 3.3 Megabyte size and does all common image Formats plus Web Resizing etc; and lots more.

Brian.Conflow.

[JRR]

Ruth:

I have PhotoShop CS and I use Russell Brown's Image Processer 2.3 as a script

Look for Image Processor 2.3 (About halfway down the page)

http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html

But it is built into CS2.

It allows you to save by size (length and height), quality etc

It's called the Image Processor.

You can access this new version of the Image Processor from within the new Adobe Bridge application. Choose Tools > Photoshop > Image Processor.

[ruthnicholls]

Hello again, thankyou all for your advice and helpful links. At the moment as time is short,(why do we always do things at the last minute?) I have gone with the link to the Simple tutorial you pointed me to, Lumenlux, thanks. Its guidance will do for now, although I have had to make separate Actions for Landscapes and for Portraits, which is a bore.

Now, having resized my images,(not all of them yet, but I'm getting there) I see that most of them are around 500-600 KB each. Now in PTE it is advised that each image should be no more than 300KB.

Can you tell me why that should be , and what will happen if they are bigger?

Thanks again,

Ruth

[JRR]

Now, having resized my images,(not all of them yet, but I'm getting there) I see that most of them are around 500-600 KB each. Now in PTE it is advised that each image should be no more than 300KB.

Can you tell me why that should be , and what will happen if they are bigger?

Thanks again,

Ruth

Ruth:

Images of 500-600kb will work fine in PTE so long as the transitions are well spaced out and the computer is fairly recent. (I initially set up my shows with images straight from the camera at 2-4mb - not recommended !!)

Images that size (500-600kb) will make your final .exe file quite large. Again not an issue depending what you want to do with it....

Images compressed into a jpg will be sized differently depending on the amount of detail in them. The more (in focus) detail the larger the file. That is why re-sizing to a single quality setting can be a problem at times (but I would not worry about it until you get to be an AV expert (if you aren't now).)

I tend to use 300-400kb files for 1280x960 and it will work for most recent (and some not so recent) computers

You could re-run your sizing actions and change the quality setting to something a little lower if you wanted.

Hope that helps a little

[ruthnicholls]

Hi JRR,thanks for that, very re-assuring. I've now almost finished all the boring resizing and ordering part and tomorrow will get down to making a pte file and previewing how it looks. (It's about Egypt, BTW)

I thought might transfer the project onto my laptop, and connect the projector up, and view the thing projected on-big-screen, to see what customisations look best. Also I could then probably see better whether the amount of sharpening I applied as part of the resizing Action in PS was ok or too much.What do you guys usually do? Maybe I should start a new post for this question.

I'm very impressed with your helpfulness, thanks.

Ruth

[JRR]

Ruth:

I sharpen each image as I see fit, less sharpening for more detail usually, but sharpening is a WHOLE other subject.

BTW, save your images in sRGB and they will usually look better as PTE is not colour managed.

PS: Wait until you get to the point that you will crop and re-size each image individually so as to get the best transformations possibles vis-a-vis having the prior image's contents line up (or not) as desired with the next image....

[ronwil]

Jim is right, sharpening is a whole other subject. However for the record I have set up an action in Photoshop for use when I have completed all my work on an image. The action resizes the image (invariably horizontal format) to 1024 pixels width and an Unsharp Mask setting. I prefer not to sharpen if I can possibly help it so I then use the slider in Edit>Fade unsharp mask to get an acceptable result.

Ron [uK]

[ruthnicholls]

Thankyou again. I think I'd be on the same set of slides for ever if I tried to sharpen each one individually. 300 images is a lot to process, (for me anyway) so I'll have to stick with batch processing for now. But any that I think are wrong when I look at them in the project preview I can go back to the Tiff and redo the resizing, +/- sharpening.

That's the plan anyway. I've only used USM at 50, radius 1pix, so I don't expect it to be too much.

If I come back again about this I'll start a new topic.

Thanks all of you

Ruth

[bjc]

Image resizing :- There is a feature in Photoshop that will automatically resize your images to fit within specified limits ~ eg: 1024x768 ~ this works on both ‘landscape’ and ‘portrait’ images and does not distort the image in any way.

The feature is called ‘FIT IMAGE’ and is accessed by clicking on File > Automate > Fit Image.

Sharpening :- Whenever you resize an image (either upwards or downwards) the image will become slightly softer ~ applying a degree of unsharpmask is generally considered beneficial ~ for images downsized to 1024x768 an amount of 100 / 0.5 / 0 works well.

Both the above can be incorporated into an ACTION, which, in conjunction with BATCH ~ File > Automate > Batch ~ can resize / sharpen / rename and save an entire folder full of images for you automatically, saving them to a separate folder if you wish.

Stripping the EXIF data from your images will also reduce their file size (although only by 5Kb or so per image) ~ a quick way of doing this is to create a NEW document of your image. This sequence can be built into your ACTION.

Select All > Copy (then close the image without saving)

File > New > Paste > Flatten.

Another option for your ACTION might be to have all your ‘SLIDES’ physically the same size (eg 1024x768, or whatever) with any non-image areas of your slide filled with a colour of your choosing.

bjc

[Marianne]

~ for images downsized to 1024x768 an amount of 100 / 0.5 / 0 works well.

Now this makes me very happy. As I always use this settings to sharpen my PTE images but always wondered if this is a sensible setting. I tend to work intuitively and learned everything either by myself or from internet tutorials.

I know sharpening is a matter of taste as I often tried other settings also recommended by other users. But I want my pictures to be as natural as possible and it was my feeling that this sharpening is subtle enough. I think by using the save for web option sharpening becomes necessary. For me thhe only exception at this rule is for pictures where a soft filter is used.

Thank you BJC!

[ronwil]

Marianne

If you then use Edit>Fade unsharp mask, as I suggested in an earlier thread, you have complete visual control.

Ron {UK}