Simple Photo Resizer - Please Give Feedback

[JavaJones]

Honestly there are far too many yahoos out there who would just use max quality because they think it's always better, and there are too many over-large images around as it is. So I'm in favor of the fixed 80% quality.

What resampling algorithm are you using? I haven't tested your app, and the results you've posted above look fine, so I'm sure you're using something decent. But algorithm used in a downsample can have as much effect on the look of the output as the JPG compression ratio. Usually Lanczos is the safest bet, but Bicubic (sharper) or even Bilinear give acceptable results.

- Oshyan

[Renegade]

Honestly there are far too many yahoos out there who would just use max quality because they think it's always better, and there are too many over-large images around as it is. So I'm in favor of the fixed 80% quality.

What resampling algorithm are you using? I haven't tested your app, and the results you've posted above look fine, so I'm sure you're using something decent. But algorithm used in a downsample can have as much effect on the look of the output as the JPG compression ratio. Usually Lanczos is the safest bet, but Bicubic (sharper) or even Bilinear give acceptable results.

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (January 26, 2011, 12:35 PM)

Bicubic.

Specifically, InterpolationMode.HighQualityBicubic.

There's not much sense in using anything else right now. I wanted to just get it done, and didn't want to fart around too much with looking into high quality algorithms. I often get distracted by going overboard on some things and using far too much tech for the task. I'm the nitwit that when looking at storing a list of names, will say to myself, "But what if I want to store a list of names for everyone on the planet? Well, a flat file won't do, because that's too hard to search. I should use this database engine because I can search much more efficiently through there! Now... Where am I going to get a complete list of everyone's names..." So, I'm trying to avoid that as it slows me down too much. i.e. Sometimes things need to be good, and sometimes they just need to be "good enough".

I think the results are good for what it is.

At some point I'll be looking into some other better solutions, but for now, I just want to get things done.

BTW - Still working on it -- getting some stuff cleaned up, refactored, and getting the scrolling stuff in there.

[J-Mac]

Very nice, simple, easy-to-use....  I'll buy it!!

Thanks!

Jim

[4wd]

i.e. People want to reduce photos to make them smaller to upload or email (most often).

-Renegade (January 24, 2011, 03:58 PM)

I stuck Shrink Pic on the wife's computer, set dimensions that were a good compromise of file size/readibility and then promptly forget about it.  It takes care of all emailed pictures, (and now uploaded ones too, I see).

[Renegade]

i.e. People want to reduce photos to make them smaller to upload or email (most often).

-Renegade (January 24, 2011, 03:58 PM)

I stuck Shrink Pic on the wife's computer, set dimensions that were a good compromise of file size/readibility and then promptly forget about it.  It takes care of all emailed pictures, (and now uploaded ones too, I see).
 (see attachment in previous post)

-4wd (January 26, 2011, 11:27 PM)

I know I could go out and find something... But...

I'd tried to get her to use IrfanView:



But nope. Too complicated.

Hermite? Bell? Mitchell? Is this a baseball team lineup?

Sharpen? I don't see any knives in the picture...

DPI? Damn Photo Isnotworking...




Still plugging away here though -- working on scrolling to resize and speeding it up a bit.

[4wd]

i.e. People want to reduce photos to make them smaller to upload or email (most often).

-Renegade (January 24, 2011, 03:58 PM)

I stuck Shrink Pic on the wife's computer, set dimensions that were a good compromise of file size/readibility and then promptly forget about it.  It takes care of all emailed pictures, (and now uploaded ones too, I see).
 (see attachment in previous post)

-4wd (January 26, 2011, 11:27 PM)

I know I could go out and find something... But...

-Renegade (January 27, 2011, 12:31 AM)

I know, I was just giving a 'no input required after installation' alternative for the specific example you mentioned.

For those people where even a slider is too confusing

[Renegade]

I know, I was just giving a 'no input required after installation' alternative for the specific example you mentioned.

For those people where even a slider is too confusing

-4wd (January 27, 2011, 12:39 AM)

Ah. Got it.




UPDATE: I've just finished the mouse wheel scrolling and a few other things in there. Download here. ed. Update is here.

Changes/tweaks:

* Mouse wheel works to resize (by 10%).
* Preview is much faster now (lower quality preview, but still high-quality saved image)
* +/- images work to resize (by 32px per click)
* No forcing image sizes in multiples of 16
* Minimum image size is 64px wide (It's not an icon resizer)
* Initial preview set to 25%'s closest multiple of 16
* Min size 32px wide, Max size 100%

TODO:

* Save image size for next image (remember)

Am I forgetting anything?


UPDATE 2011-03-25:
Follow up is in this thread.

[Curt]

regarding IrfanView

by the way, all your wife needs to remember is, to press Ctrl+R > Alt+1 (for 1024x768 pixels), (or Alt+9 for 1920x1080 pixels),> OK > save.

-Curt (January 26, 2011, 03:08 AM)

and tell her to not look at the screen but at the keyboard ;-)

[Renegade]

regarding IrfanView

by the way, all your wife needs to remember is, to press Ctrl+R > Alt+1 (for 1024x768 pixels), (or Alt+9 for 1920x1080 pixels),> OK > save.

-Curt (January 26, 2011, 03:08 AM)

and tell here to not look at the screen but at the keyboard ;-)

-Curt (January 27, 2011, 03:03 AM)

I was wondering what you were talking about there. I thought you meant in Windows Explorer... Which didn't work.

Got the memory done after one of my famous taco dinners~!

[rjbull]

I'm the nitwit that when looking at storing a list of names, will say to myself, "But what if I want to store a list of names for everyone on the planet? [...] Now... Where am I going to get a complete list of everyone's names..."

-Renegade (January 26, 2011, 09:42 PM)

Facebook? 

[Renegade]

Well, got a few improvements in there and a new installer:

Photo Resizer ed. Update here.

You can drag & drop a photo onto the desktop icon to open & resize a photo now.

It only saves JPGs, but you can also use SVG, GIF, PNG and BMPs with it.

I also put in some options there (press F4):



Those address a few things that people asked about.

Also, the quick save now uses tokens to identify the file with width and height. It's customizable in the preferences.

And 3 ways to open files:

* Drag & drop
* File open dialog (click to open)
* Drag & drop onto desktop icon (i.e. a command line argument)

Anyways, this is the final:



And a BIG THANKS to Ath for helping me out with the Inno Setup installer and getting an automatic download for the .NET 4 Client Profile for anyone that doesn't already have it installed.

Still working on the website and junk though... Unfortunately I've been very distracted with client work -- that nasty stuff that puts food on the table... Sigh...

UPDATE 2011-03-25:

Follow up is in this thread.

[vlastimil]

Renegade, I was in similar situation years ago, but went even more extreme with the ease of use and ended up with this free resizing tool: http://www.rw-design...r.com/picture-resize
I added a lot of features over the years, but the basic functionality remained the same. Drag and drop photo or folder on it and it creates resized copies. No GUI, no sliders, no buttons. It can be configured by changing its name... Newbies just drag and drop, power users can do a lot more.

BTW cubic resampling is no good when shrinking images. It is for magnification of images.

[nudone]

cool. i look forward to seeing the other super simple programs in the range. 

[johnk]

Another option: For XP I always used the Microsoft Power Toy Photo Resizer. Right-click on file and resize. Can't get much simpler. And someone has re-invented Photo Resizer for Win7. Seems to work fine.

[Carol Haynes]

Nice little app. Couple of suggestions:

• How about adding an option to save suitable for a webpage just a single tick box will do (ie. set the right DPI without asking about details).
• As well as showing the size of the output how about including the file size output - if you are resizing to email a photo the file size is useful to know.

[Renegade]

Nice little app. Couple of suggestions:

• How about adding an option to save suitable for a webpage just a single tick box will do (ie. set the right DPI without asking about details).
• As well as showing the size of the output how about including the file size output - if you are resizing to email a photo the file size is useful to know.

-Carol Haynes (February 05, 2011, 06:55 PM)

Good grief... Carol - you have an unnatural talent for making me work~!

I've added in the file size preview. It's exactly accurate though I've opted to display on KB because that's the easiest thing for people to understand. I don't know many people that can instantly divide 7 digit number by 1024.

That was easy.

The hard part... Sigh... DPI -- I did extensive testing and checking on this, including code rewrites and reverts. During that, I believe that I've discovered a bug in Adobe Photoshop.

It turns out that I had it right all along. In Photoshop's image resizer, they report the EXIF data, which I neglected to change and forgot about while doing this all, which is why it took me so long. The resized images are at 96 though the EXIF data reports otherwise for images with original resolutions that are different.

In any event, I'm going to have to finish the EXIF/tag stuff later. Got client work to do today.

Here's the updated installer with the size preview:

Photo Resizer ed. Update here.

Here's a screenshot of the UI as it has changed a bit:





Sigh... Back to work...



UPDATE 2011-03-25:

Follow up in this thread.

[Renegade]

Oh - a quick note --- the size update has a very brief delay for performance reasons. (Needs a bit more tuning, but it's ok for now.)

[Carol Haynes]

Good grief... Carol - you have an unnatural talent for making me work~!

Sigh... Back to work...

-Renegade (February 05, 2011, 10:08 PM)

LOL - sorry but you know it will be worth it

Now all you need is an 'apply this to a whole folder of photos' button

[cranioscopical]

Hi Renegade,

No criticism intended here, it's a great app.
Given your initial posting, though, are you in danger of losing the original 'dead simple' concept?

[Renegade]

Good grief... Carol - you have an unnatural talent for making me work~!

Sigh... Back to work...

-Renegade (February 05, 2011, 10:08 PM)

LOL - sorry but you know it will be worth it

Now all you need is an 'apply this to a whole folder of photos' button

-Carol Haynes (February 06, 2011, 06:45 AM)

The size preview is a good addition. It was one of those things I had in mind but figured that I'd let it slide until later unless someone mentioned it.

As for bulk processing... That's out. See below.

Hi Renegade,

No criticism intended here, it's a great app.
Given your initial posting, though, are you in danger of losing the original 'dead simple' concept?

-cranioscopical (February 06, 2011, 09:25 AM)

I don't think so. The addition of the size preview is a passive thing for the user, so it doesn't burden things much there. It does increase the size of the UI though, but not too much. Everything is still clear and uncluttered.

Bulk processing is simply too much. I'd rather do a dedicated bulk utility for that. I've got all the code for it already done, so that's not a problem. The problem is that it would clutter things up far too much.

That being said, I do plan to write some more bulk processing software for photos.

There won't be much danger of too much feature creep in there as I'll be sticking to "photos" and not "images". i.e. Images from cameras, and not from authoring/editing tools.

Right now I think that the program is about right. There's some fine tuning I still want to do, but it's only performance stuff to squeeze out a bit more (and the EXIF tag thing).

[Renegade]

Renegade, I was in similar situation years ago, but went even more extreme with the ease of use and ended up with this free resizing tool: http://www.rw-design...r.com/picture-resize
I added a lot of features over the years, but the basic functionality remained the same. Drag and drop photo or folder on it and it creates resized copies. No GUI, no sliders, no buttons. It can be configured by changing its name... Newbies just drag and drop, power users can do a lot more.

BTW cubic resampling is no good when shrinking images. It is for magnification of images.

-vlastimil (February 05, 2011, 08:12 AM)

There are better algorithms, but I just wanted to get it done -- it's the best quality available in the shortest time. The results are more than good enough for casual users. It's not targeted at prosumers or professionals. Heck, I still use Photoshop for resizing some things as Photo Resizer doesn't do everything that I need.

That's a very interesting approach to have the name of the application determine the options. I've never seen that before. I've of course seen differently named versions of applications, but not like that. A very interesting innovation!

One of the "inspirations/motivations" for it is someone I know and who shall remain unnamed -- Asking him to rename a file is a major task. Watching him browse to a different location on his computer is enough to make you want to rip your eye-balls out and scream. While seeing Cthulhu may give you a few insanity points, he'll max you out real quit as you find yourself screaming wildly and attempting to bash your brains out in a padded cell.

I've not given him a link for it yet, but he'll be the acid test to see if I've managed to get the UI right.

[Renegade]

Ok, a few updates...

Over in this thread, I saw deano looking for context menus, and thought it would work well as it doesn't have any impact on the main UI. So, there's a shortcut in the Windows Explorer context menu now for JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP and SVG files. i.e. Right-click on one of those image types. I used the least possible impact on the system so as not to take any resources for that. No COM stuff or loading DLLs or any of that nonsense.

Also, someone had mentioned presets, but I just can't see adding in anything to the visible UI as it would clutter things up and get confusing. There's already a lot there for some people. Soooo...

-, +, F2, F3 now size the image to presets by width (height is relative):

• 120
• 160
• 240
• 320
• 400
• 512
• 600
• 640
• 800
• 1024
• 1152
• 1280
• 1360
• 1440
• 1600
• 1680
• 1920
• 2048
• 2560
• 3200
• 100%

Preset were all chosen according to popular monitor and camera resolutions.

They cycle as well. So once you hit the minimum or maximum, it flips back to the maximum or minimum, respectively.

Arrow keys and PageUp/Down keys still work as before. 16px increments for arrow keys and 64 pixel increments for PageUp/Down.

Basically, just "silent" type modifications. No noise in the UI, but a few things to make it easier to use.


Very shortly I will get on top of that nice new shiny Help & Manual license and do a help file even. Mostly big screenshots and "how to" task-based stuff for people. (I was soooo hoping to win that, and soooo glad when I did~! )

[vlastimil]

One of the "inspirations/motivations" for it is someone I know and who shall remain unnamed -- Asking him to rename a file is a major task. Watching him browse to a different location on his computer is enough to make you want to rip your eye-balls out and scream. While seeing Cthulhu may give you a few insanity points, he'll max you out real quit as you find yourself screaming wildly and attempting to bash your brains out in a padded cell.

I've not given him a link for it yet, but he'll be the acid test to see if I've managed to get the UI right.

-Renegade (February 06, 2011, 03:51 PM)

Having such person is a big +. It is too bad that each person can only by used once for such tests.

Anyway, what I wanted to emphasize in my previous post is that you should pick an area and make your picture resizer be totally awesome in that single area. The area may be for example ease of use, resizing speed, image quality, user interface sexiness, understandable documentation, portability, seamless integration with another software, or something completely different. I followed that path years ago and it worked. There is a good number of free picture resizers out there competing for attention (some of them even online services), and being best in something is a must.

[Renegade]

One of the "inspirations/motivations" for it is someone I know and who shall remain unnamed -- Asking him to rename a file is a major task. Watching him browse to a different location on his computer is enough to make you want to rip your eye-balls out and scream. While seeing Cthulhu may give you a few insanity points, he'll max you out real quit as you find yourself screaming wildly and attempting to bash your brains out in a padded cell.

I've not given him a link for it yet, but he'll be the acid test to see if I've managed to get the UI right.

-Renegade (February 06, 2011, 03:51 PM)

Having such person is a big +. It is too bad that each person can only by used once for such tests.

Anyway, what I wanted to emphasize in my previous post is that you should pick an area and make your picture resizer be totally awesome in that single area. The area may be for example ease of use, resizing speed, image quality, user interface sexiness, understandable documentation, portability, seamless integration with another software, or something completely different. I followed that path years ago and it worked. There is a good number of free picture resizers out there competing for attention (some of them even online services), and being best in something is a must.

-vlastimil (February 12, 2011, 03:49 PM)

Good advice!

I recently re-examined my approach to software and thought that going the simple route is what people really need most of the time. So that's where I'm going to be focusing. Drop dead simple. Super Simple.

At the moment I'm working on the web site for it. I'll be adding more there, but for the moment, it will just be this program.

I think I'm also going to try to do an online version as well. We'll see. I'm planning on using Silverlight because it's simply the best technology out there for clientside power. It also looks like it has over 62% market pentration now:

http://www.statowl.c...rket_penetration.php

And an interesting blog post on Silverlight:

http://www.uxpassion...ration-market-share/

As for the number of resizers, yeah... Tons of them. I'm not going to try to have the "best" one -- only the most usable and easiest one.

Well, back to the website work. It's getting there slowly... The biggest issue isn't "getting the site done", but rather getting the site and software done in a way that will put food on the table. There's a very big difference there.