Hewie's Views & Reviews August 02 2007

September, 2007

++++ Resize Photos Quickly with Quick Photo Resizer

The popular digital cameras take pictures that are 3072 pixels across and 2304 pixels down.  To figure the megapixels, just multiply them.  The result is 7,077,888 pixels or 7.1 megapixels. A typical high quality picture from my camera is about a 2 megabyte jpeg file.

 

If I want to share 1 or more pictures with friends, I will have trouble sending them via an email attachment due to the size of the attachments. In order to send pictures, I have to resize them. I also have to consider my friends ability to view the pictures. A good size to send is 800 x 600 for a large picture or 640 x 480 is another good size to send.

 

There are many ways to resize your pictures. You can use your photo editing software or even Outlook can resize your photos if they are to attached to a message.  However, the quality is usually fairly poor, you have very little control of the size, and any writing may be illegible. If you want to resize a lot of pictures at once or even convert from bmp to jpg, it becomes a chore.

 

Recently I found Quick Photo Resizer from DzSoft http://www.dzsoft.com at $29. It is shareware, so you can try it first for free.  I find that I use it a lot for web site pictures, as well as pictures that I attach to emails. 

 

You open the program, set the size from a drop down list, and drag one or more file names from Windows Explorer and drop them into Quick Photo Resizer. It takes seconds for the program to resize and slightly change the file name, as well as covert to a jpeg if necessary. Just drag the pictures back to Windows Explorer and you are done.

 

I even cropped a head shot from a 7 megapixel picture and resized it to a 55 x 41 picture that was extremely clear to include in a calendar. I have not been able to get such good results from other photo programs.

 

Here are the sizes that I get with a typical picture.

I find Quick Photo Resizer a valuable item in my tool kit.

 

++++ Free Online Calendar at calendars.net

I maintain an events calendar for a volunteer organization to which I belong.  I searched for software to make this an easy exercise.  There were several programs that required quite a bit of work and some were very expensive.  In addition, there were additional requirements needed to locate it on a website.

 

I searched for any online calendars that might work.  A friend recommended Calendars.net http://www.calendars.net which is also free. All that is needed is to register and give the calendar a name.  The events calendar that I created is in color and can be viewed in standard calendar format or in a list format.  It’s the viewer’s choice. There are many languages available, if needed. You can change any of the colors to get the look that you want.

 

You can add or edit any one-time event or re-occurring events.  If you want, you may include simple HTML to have pictures or links in your calendar.  The pictures will have to located somewhere on the web to able to be viewed.  Usually your ISP provides some home page access, and you can use that to store pictures to be linked.  

 

The calendar can come alive by using animated gifs for event dates.  I also use Quick Photo Resizer by DzSoft http://www.dzsoft.com as discussed above to produce 55x41 pixel pictures to add to events.  By adding a description to an event there is a link to that description as a pop-up from the short event name shown in the calendar.

 

By going to the site, calendars.net does provide a practice calendar to see how easy it is to set up your own calendar to share with others.