Some users however might find those two programs complicated to use. FreeSizer could be an alternative for some users, despite the fact that it only seems to support the jpg image format.

It is possible to resize images with two clicks. The program displays a drag and drop area for images after startup. You can drag and drop jpg images from your local computer to that area. Each image is shown with its filename, dimensions, size and estimatations about the new dimension and size.

The output images can be previewed individually with a double-click which is handy to evaluate the quality and size after the operation.

FreeSizer is profile based which means that the images are resized and optimized for specific usage scenarios. Available profiles include e-mail, instant messenger, social networks, iPhone and custom. Only the custom profile can be edited under the Settings tab, all other profiles use fix parameters that cannot be changed.

They differ in maximum resolution and quality. A maximum width and / or height, as well as a quality setting (original, high, medium, low) can be defined in the settings for the custom profile.

The settings offer additional options to set a custom output directory. A click on the start resizing button processes all images in the drag and drop area. Images are by default saved into the same directory as the original images, but with different file names.

FreeSizer has several shortcomings that make it a less than ideal product for most users. Among them are lack of support for popular image formats like png, a missing option to modify the profiles and only four quality settings. It should be fine for users who only work with jpg images.

The program is available as a 32-bit and 64-bit edition for the Windows operating system at the developer website.

A new version of the program was just released, reason enough to take another look at it. VSO Image Resizer offers resizing and conversion options for many popular image formats. Among the supported formats are jpg, png, bmp, psd, tif and numerous other formats including digital camera RAW formats.

All operations are handled in the program interface. It begins by loading images from the local or a remotely connected system. Files are displayed in list format by default, which can be changed to thumbnails or a list format with image previews.

A click on Next or the selection of the Options tab at the top opens the extensive resizing and conversion options.

VSO Image Resizer comes with preconfigured profiles for various situations, for instance to resize the images to DVD, HDTV, Email, iPhone or iPod compatible formats. New profiles can be saved so that they can be loaded again whenever images need to be processed the same way at a later time. Additional profiles can be enabled in the program settings.

The options screen contains many resizing and conversion options. The resizing options alone are extensive. It is possible to specify a specific width and height in percent, pixels, centimeters or inches. Five resizing modes are available:

• Fit: Resize and fit images into the target resolution, keeps the original aspect ratio.
• Stretch: Resize and stretch images to the target’s aspect ratio.
• Center: Center image in the target resolution.
• Crop: Crop image to center with target resolution.
• Retarget (Seam Carving): Smart resize mode, may destroy image content if aspect ratio is different.

Four tabs below those options offer additional image manipulation settings.

• General: Filtering options, resizing policy to define when and if images are resized, the output format, image quality setting or size maximum, resolution in dpi and filename mask are configured here.
• Effects: Options to integrate a watermark image, invert colors, convert the image to grayscale, add a Sepia effect or add a border.
• Misc: Adjust resolution for portrait, keep original file date, copy metadata and action on name conflicts.
• Publish: Send by email.

The output images can be previewed at any time with a click on the Preview button in the header. Output options include the creation of image copies, resizing the original images, moving, compressing or creating PDFs.

A basic version of the interface can be enabled which basically hides the four tabs described above. VSO Image Resizer is a handy image resizing software. Option to create resizing profiles and seam carving are not found in the majority of free image resizing applications.

The software is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system from Windows XP SP2 to Windows 7. It can be downloaded from the official VSO Software website.

Multiple Image Resizer .NET offers to resize multiple images in one go. I have previously reviewed the application (see Resize Pictures With Multiple Image Resizer), a lot as changed since then. The developer has for instance completely redeveloped the application using Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0. Some of the more noteworthy changes are multi-core processor support, support for various RAW camera image formats, built-in update checker and new resizing methods.

The Microsoft .NET application is easy to use as you can see from the screenshot below.

Images can be added in multiple ways. It is possible to select individual images, single folders with images, and folders and their subfolders. All images are added to the table in the upper half of the screen. Their name, folder, image type and file size is displayed here.

Images that are selected are shown as previews on the right side. The application displays a copy of the unprocessed image and processed image so that it is easy to see the differences between the two.

The resizing and processing takes place in the footer bar. Here it is possible to select one of the available processing options.

Available are the following options:

• Processing Options: Select the options that should be processed. Only the select options are applied to the images. Available for selection are crop, resize, rotate and flip, border, add text and overlay image.
• Resizing Method: Select a resizing option like percentage, scale to height or width, maximum size, withing dimensions and scale by largest dimension.
• Rotate and Flip: Options to rotate and flip the image.
• Border: Borders can be added to the image. Available are one or two borders with individual width and colors.
• Cropping: Crop by X or Y coordinate or width and height.
• Text: Option to add text to every image. Font, text position, alignment and transparency can be selected.
• Image Overlay: Overlay a select image on all images that are processed, similar to a watermark. Again with detailed position and transparency options.
• Save Options: Select where and how the processed images should be saved. Different image types and options are available for selection.

Images are processed with a click on the Go button. The application is responsive and fast. It offers a lot of options to resize multiple images comfortably.

Multiple Image Resizer .NET can be downloaded from the developer website. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating systems. This includes Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and the Server variants. It requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0.

The image resizing and optimization options are accessible in the lower half of the program. Tabs at the bottom are used to display them on the screen. The software can output the images as jpeg, gif or png images and the first tab reflects that as it offers format specific options.

This includes quality and encoding settings that have a direct effect on the size and quality of the optimized image.

The other two tabs can be used to remove metadata from the images and to make other adjustments to them before they are saved to the computer.

Additional controls are available regardless of the selected image output format. It is for instance possible to zoom in or out of the image, rotate images, resize them or compress the image so that it does not exceed a specified file size.

The batch optimizer on the other hand can be used to effectively resize and optimize multiple images. Images can be compressed, resized, rotated or flipped easily with the tool that can overwrite the existing images or save the edited ones in another folder or under a new name.

Riot is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. The image resizer and optimizer is free for personal use and available as a portable version and an installer.

BatchBlitz is a free photo resizer for the Windows operating system that can be used for that purpose. The software program divided the resizing into three steps beginning with the selection of the photos on the local computer system.

It offers advanced file filtering options to find and process only the photos and images that the user of the software wants. Provided are for instance name, location and regular expression filters.

The output settings are defined in the second step with options to save all processed photos in a new folder or to overwrite the original images.

The actions menu is the final step of the process. The photo resizing end manipulation actions are defined in here. The actions are divided into pre-processors, processors and post-processors with file filters in the first category, photo editing options in the second and output options to convert and rename the photos in the third.

The main processors include resizing, rotating or colorizing photos as well as adding pictures or text and changing auto contrast and auto levels. The way the options are selected is probably not the most sophisticated one as each option has to be clicked on to open its configuration menu. It would probably be easier to display the options right in the same interface.

A click on the Start button initiates the photo resizing process. BatchBlitz is a nice program that can easily be used to manipulate a large amount of photos. The software can be downloaded from the developer’s website. (via Donation Coder)

The images are then shown as thumbnails in the left pane of the application and the user can tweak a few settings before he hits the start button. It’s possible to rotate the images, select an output folder and chose if the images should be reduced by percentage or constant values. It is also possible to change the output format to another image format.

The functions described above are supported by most, if not all, image resizers on earth. The additional features that might make Imgares interesting to some users are the following:

• Add Background – Adds a background color to the image and increases the size of the image by a defined margin.
• Add Text – Text can be added to the images.Colors, Fonts and alignment can be selected.
• Change Colors – Change Light, Contrast and Red, Green & Blue values of the images.
• Create Slideshow – Creates a movie (avi) slideshow from the images with transition effects.

Imgares is definitely not the usual image resizer. Especially the movie slideshow feature is something that is not that common.

Supported features are to browse for files and folders or to drag and drop them into the program interface. The resizing options allow to change the resolution of each image by percentage or fixed width and a few preset dimensions can be selected to make them usable in iPhones, iPods or the PSP.

Other options that directly affect the resized image are the image quality and two checkboxes to maintain aspect ratio and preserve width and height by orientation.

Several output parameters can be defined as well. The output file format can be selected as well as the output folder and the filename of the new files. Several variations are available for that purpose, for example adding day,month and year information to the filename.

Several optional parameters are available that can rotate the images or apply a black and white or negative filter.

It’s possible to specify a destination directory for the resized images, add a suffix to the filename – something like thumb or small would do – and if you want to overwrite existing images in that directory.

There is no preview of the output images, no information on file size, no choice of file extension. As I said it’s lightweight and does only one thing at the moment. I still like Squash because it is easy to use, mainly because of the missing options of course.

Squash is available for Windows and Linux. [via Genbeta]

Multiple Image Resizer [homepage] is a software for Windows that requires the .net Framework from Microsoft. It – as the name suggests – offers functions to resize, and edit, multiple images at once. To make things as easy as possible it offers functions to scan for images, add folders and the images within or add individual images that should be processed.

Images can be previewed if the user selects them. Several processing options besides resizing the images can be selected. Those are the options crop, rotate and flip, border, add text and overlay image. By default only the resizing option is selected.

Each option has its own configuration menu. The resizing menu for instance offers several ways to resize the images. The user can select a certain width and height in pixels, a percentage value, a dimension and several other options.

A text can be added to the image. This can be used to sort of watermark images or put a small copyright notice in a corner of the image. The font and its color as well as the position of the text can be selected.

The processed images can be saved in various different formats including the most used ones like jpg and png.

I therefor decided to look for an easier way to resize the images and I found it in the software Image Resizer. All I need to do now is to select all images that I want to be resized and click on ok to process them all. I did create a new image profile before to add the best fitting size for my website and saved that as the standard profile that will be used when resizing images.

Image Resizer offers several other functions that could be useful for some users. It is possible to choose the output file format, the output quality, the name of the newly created images, watermarks and if the new images should overwrite the original ones and where they should be saved if not.

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