Advice on Bulk Resizing High Quality Images for Free - Best Program? or Help!

giantmutantbroccoli

I need a program that will allow me to resize images in bulk, without making them look pixelated or poor quality. Or possibly some advice on what I'm doing wrong! At the moment I use Photoshop Elements (came free with something, can't remember what!), which allows me to do everything I want to do - but produces rather grainy, dingy, nasty looking pictures. Before that I was resizing and uploading everything with Google Picasa, then downloading the images I wanted. The pictures Google produced looked lovely, but it was very time consuming. Photoshop Elements is very quick, but the pictures look horrible!
I've also got the Gimp, but alas no money to spend on expensive image programs. I'm resizing jpeg files from 4000pix to 800pix, so it's a big step down.
Does anyone know of a free program that will resize images in bulk and make them look good? Or alternatively does anyone have any advice on how to set Photoshop Elements so the pictures don't look horrible?

WTFH

If you've got GIMP, you'll want BIMP...
http://www.alessandrofrancesconi.it/projects/bimp/

G42

Increasing the size of photos often results in poorer quality but reducing the size is usually OK so perhaps you're not quite doing it properly.

This Tutorial might be of help with Photoshop Elements.

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pselements/ss/processmultiple.htm

giantmutantbroccoli

WTFH - Thank you so much! I didn't even know there was such a thing, I'm going to try that out for my next batch of pictures. Even if I don't like the way it resizes things I've definitely got a use for a GIMP batch editer
G42 - Thank you for the link, I did read through the tutorial but sadly I am already following all those steps. I think the problem is I just don't like the algorithm PSE uses to resize pictures, I've tried every variation on there that I could see and never really liked the results.

Fingers crossed BIMP does the job

Johnmcl7

Which version of PSE are you using? I find it's very good at resizing images as it keeps decent quality with reasonable file sizes (I only use the max setting) and compression plus I've no issues with the compatibility of the resulting jpegs.

I previously used Irfanview but find if the file size is reasonable the pictures are too heavily compressed and if the quality is good, the file size is too high plus I had some odd issues with the resulting resized jpegs and photo frames (Samsung frame wouldn't play them at all, the Sony one would but the pictures had this strange over sharpened look to them)

John

Deneb

If you don't want all the bells and whistles of the GIMP, Paint.NET with the Bulk Image Processor plugin might be worth a look too.

Weird_Nev

I've actually found Picasa to be really good at this. Select the photos you want, and export them with the required settings. It reains quality and is fast and convenient.
I generally do all my photo editing in Picasa, I find it has tools that just do their job. I'll only use GIMP if there's something major to be done.

bod1467

IrfanView?

SilverBird_2

I use the free version of Fotosizer.

Nilrem

bod1467 wrote: »

IrfanView?

That's the one I tend to use for resizing (well shrinking) pictures, I've got Photoshop essentials (I think it is*), and PSP Pro XII or something installed, but IrfanView tends to get the most use as it's fast to load, easy to use and does most of what I want for basic image crops/resizing etc (I only use PSP for red eye reduction and the like).


*It came free with my scanner.

giantmutantbroccoli

Thank you very much everybody, I have to say I feel a bit silly for not having noticed that Picasa gives you the option to resize images when you export them! I've now tried both BIMP and Picasa and they both produce lovely clear, crisp images - I can't tell the difference between them at all. GIMP comes with so many other useful features I'm happy to have found a batch plugin for it, even if I don't end up using it for resizing.
Thanks again!