I shoot 100-200 photos every time I teach a workshop. I’m not so good at taking the time to burn CD-ROM disks, get students’ home addresses and mail them out. Plus, that’s $ 30.00 + disks every time I do so.
Love to make use of some of the excellent photo sharing sites. That way, students can get a link to their workshop folder, download what they wish.
I use a Nikon D-70S. Even on the smaller file size, they are whoppin’ large files. Around a half-meg each. How do I go about importing them all into my Mac and then reducing the size down to a workable size so I can upload 100-200 per workshop without exceeding my storage limit? I only have iPhoto on the machine. Also have Photo Studio software for my scanner. Reducing THAT way yields very very small images. Within reason, can’t I reduce the resolution/ file size considerably without wrecking the images? Seems such a basic thing, and I’m a professional photographer/ cameraman ! And yet, I can’t seem to pull it off.
Is there a software package I should use to reduce the image file sizes so they can be stored online efficiently?
iPhoto, of course, allows one to email an image or a few images. That software DOES allow you to re-size the image down quite a bit in resolution. A 1.2 meg photo will become a 201 k photo and still look lovely at 5x7, if not 8x10.
However, I cannot go emailing 100 photos up to Flicker or Shutterbug.
There’s actually a great iPhoto plugin called FlickrExport – it’s cheap and you can try before you buy. It will allow you to upload a whole iPhoto library to a Flickr photo set, which you can then email the link to.
Are you using Flickr? I believe the maximum size there for photos is 10MB. (My largest photos there are only about 1MB, however). If you load large pictures there, they get reduced in size for normal display, but the full resolution is there if you want it. I don’t email to Flickr, however – I use the upload facility on their website.
If you’re doing anything involving making batch changes of size, resoultion, format, etc. to large numbers of images and you’re on a Mac, you must get Graphic Converter from Lemke Software. Best $35 you’ll ever spend, and you can try it out before parting with your money. I’ve been using it since the earliest versions in the mid-1990s and there’s no better tool for the things it does.
half-way down the page there is a line titled “Image Resizer”. To the right of that title is the file itself to download, called (you guessed it…) imageResizer.exe
Click on it, download, follow a few simple instructions, it adds itself permanently to your mouse. Anytime you right-click on a picture file, there will be a line in the menu that pops up and says (you guessed it, again…) “resize picture”.
Pick small (usually too small), medium (=fills your computer screen) or large ( the image is too big to see all at once on the screen)
The computer saves your photo right where it is, in the same folder, and with the same name, but with the word ‘small’ ‘medium’ or large added to the file name.
The photos will be save with drastically smaller numbers of bytes, but with no visible loss of detail (assuming you just want
to send the photo in an email, and not enlarge it for framing on the wall)
oops: on re-reading the thread (hey–that’s 3 whole posts, and I’m a busy guy:) ) I see you need a batch program. My suggestion works fine, but you have to do it one at a time.
Someone on the board here recommended Imageshack as a solution to image storage for my website - the imageshack toolbar for Firefox will resize on the fly during upload (multiple files) - also, there is no overall storage limit - just a per-file limit of 1.53mb (or 3mb if you pay)
And therein lies the rub. These are shot as huge files- because we never know which ONE image might wind up being blown up for use at a trade show or some such. PhotoBucket did seem to resize on the fly, I gotta try some more.
Keep the ideas coming- I’m very grateful for the work-arounds !
Irfanview will do batch resize / rename / re-everything. It is free and simple to use. The last version also can display svg vector files and rotate any number of degrees. cool.
In the case of images required in high-quality formats, surely they’re going to have to ask for the high-quality version specifically, aren’t they? There’s no way to batch resize or recompress your images AND preserve their original quality and resolution - at least, not in a single image file that will suit your purposes.
I would use an online image host to store and distribute reasonable-quality scaled-down copies (1.5mb per file will contain about 5 or 6 megapixels of jpeg, subject to assorted variables), with production-quality originals being available on request.
You can’t fit a quart in a pint pot, so neither can you pour one out of it.
Alternatively, using automator (it ships with your Mac, in the Applications folder), you can script a resize function for photos that will resize all the photos dropped on it to a given pixel dimension and resave them with higher/lower JPEG settings. You’ll have to play around a little bit to figure it out, but it’s free, and you can probably get something that works in a half hour or so.
For more money, Photoshop and Bridge have this capability, too, but that’s probably overkill.
As a part of your course, each student must buy an 8 GIG Flash drive. Each student must on a certain day download ‘Class February 09 Folder’ to his / her flash drive.
But if they don’t have a Mac, oops… Or can Windows now open Mac photo files? Maybe online is best. But what if they are on dial-up? They’ll die of old age… Will a class worth of photos fit on a single CD or DVD? Devote one class period to having everyone copy that folder to a CD.
I don’t care how great your puter is, if you are on dial-up and need to down load big files, you are screwed…
BOY that’s some cool stuff !!! Playing with Automator now. Thanks !! Unsure if it will do the trick but the whole IDEA of pulling functions from different apps is mighty alluring.
If you search under “batch file resizing” there are a number of free programs out there. You can resize the picture and reduce the file size independently with: