How-to Resize your Photos Using EasyThumbnails - Free Software!

[Mike Phillips]

How to resize your photos before uploading

Now that you have successfully cropped out the extra scenery and have focused your readers attention on the primary subject in the photo, let's see how to resize your photo for maximum effect while using minimal resources.

Easy Thumbnails Website

Screenshot of the Easy Thumbnails Website




Create and name a folder EZ Thumbnails on your C-drive in the Program Files folder, (like you did for Lview Pro), and then click the Free Download button on the left hand side of the page and a dialog box will appear. Click on the Save button, and save it to the EZ Thumbnail folder you created on your C-drive in Program Files.



After the program is finished downloading, go to that folder and double click on the .exe file and your now in business.

There are three tabs across the top of this software program. The only tabs you need to be concerned is the Files and Settings tabs.

The Files Tabs enables you to browse to the folder in which you keep your pictures, this would be where it says, Look in.

Towards the bottom of the page you will see the words, Save in, over to the left is a button, the shape of a square. By clicking on this button, you can choose where the Easy Thumbnails programs saves the pictures you resize. This can be the same folder the pictures are in, or a different folder.




Now click the Settings tab.



In the settings tab, there are three settings you need to be aware of.

The Max Width setting
The Maximum Width setting is used to adjust the width of your pictures. For most discussion forums 500 to 600 pixels wide is the maximum width you want to make your pictures. Otherwise, you will force the reader to horizontal scroll. I switch between 600 and 700 pixels on most of the photo's I upload. The Photo Post software that Meguiar's Online uses for archiving and displaying photos automatically resizes photos to three different widths. Those would be,

* Thumbnail

* 600 pixels wide, This is the first size photo you click to when you click on a thumbnail.

* 700 pixels wide - This is the maximum file size Photo Post is set up to allow you to upload

The Max Height setting
The Maximum Height setting should be set to a very high number, like 100000000. The reason for this is because the Easy Thumbnail software will resize your photo's using the Max Width setting as a baseline. The height will be configured optimally according to the original photo's dimensions. That is of course as long as the number in the Max Height is larger than any photo you are resizing, (Which for most people, 100000000 pixels should be taller than any photo you can take). With settings like this, Easy Thumbnails will automatically resize the photo based solely upon the width.

If you are going to resize a photo that is taller than it is wide, then set your Maximum Width to something like 300 or 400 pixels wide. (After you do a couple of tall pictures, you will see what I mean.

The Prefix/Suffix setting
The Prefix/Suffix setting inserts a prefix number in front of the original file name. You can use this to help you identify the files you have created using Easy Thumbnails. For example: If your photo is named, car.jpg and the original photo is 800 pixels wide. If you put 600 in the Max Width setting, and then put 600_ in the Prefix setting, after you click on the Make button to resize the photo, the new photo you will have made will be called, 600_car.jpg

If you leave this setting blank, it will add nothing to the name of the photo. Be warned that if your Save in folder is the same as your original photo folder, then your original photo will be overwritten and be the new size you have put into the Max Width setting.

This can be a good thing or a bad thing.

If you want to keep your original photos the same size for safe keeping, then you should either put some type of prefix in the Prefix setting box, or make your Save in folder something different than where your original photos are stored. If you don?t want to fill up your hard drive with space hogging pictures, and keeping an original copy of your photos isn?t important to you, then go a head and leave the Prefix setting box blank, and save your photo?s into the same folder the original photos are stored in.

Give this free program a try, it works great and from what I can tell it has never distored any of my photos in anyway.

Next, we'll learn how to Upload your photo's into the Meguiar's Online Gallery

Mike