An Easier Way to Resize Your Digital Photos

Microsoft, now offers a tool that makes resizing photos almost trivial…for Windows XP users only. Thanks to one of our long time computer user group friends (Bob C.) for finding this great program.

Simply called Image Resizer, this program installs itself as an option when you RIGHT click on a picture. It only takes three minutes to download on even the slowest phone Internet connection. Here’s how it works:

1. After you download the program (remember where you saved it), double-click on the file to install the program.
2. When the installation finishes, open a folder on your computer with pictures in it and RIGHT click on any file to see the Resize pictures option, click on it. 
3. You will be presented with four standard size options and a fifth option you can customize. For most email uses, use the "small" size.
4. Click OK and the program will make a copy of your original in the smaller size

To resize multiple pictures at the same time, use the Ctrl+Click technique to select the photos, then RIGHT click on any of the highlighted photos to resize as above.

By default, the program copies and then resizes the photos, but if you don’t need the large originals, click the Advanced button and choose the "resize original pictures…" option. As the options explains, this will resize the original photos and not make copies.

That is all there is to this superb, free utility. It is always a good idea to resize your digital photos or scans before sending them via email and this tool does a great job. For web designers and eBay sellers, this program performs equally well since you need small, fast loading images for both web pages and eBay.