I was looking for a tool that is able to create thumbnails of images in a folder. Although FILEminimizer Pictures is really good, but I am looking for something that is small, free, portable and supports command line. Preferably free so that everyone can use them and don’t need to resort to any cracks or keygens or spending money on it. I also wanted it to be small and portable unlike a lot of bloated batch image resizers which requires installation that you can easily find in Google. Most importantly, I wanted it to be automated without showing the graphical user interface.

I really had a hard time searching for it because the Google SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) was showing a lot of shareware or they are really bloated software that needs to be installed. After flipping through a lot of search results pages, I finally found what I wanted and it’s called Picture Resizer. I guess what took me so long to find it is because I kept searching using the keyword “thumbnail” but not the word “resize”. This tool is pretty amazing on how it works.

Picture Resizer 4.0 is an easy-to-use and free tool for batch resizing of JPG pictures and photos. It can be as easy as drag and dropping a folder with a lot of JPG images to the file and it automatically does the rest, or you can use command line parameters for more advanced scenarios. What make this tool so special is the size of output pictures is controlled by the name of the application. Here’s an example.

By default the file name for the Picture Resizer is PhotoResize400.exe. If you drag a really huge JPG image and drop it to PhotoResize400.exe, the JPG image will automatically scaled to 400px in height maintaining the aspect ratio.
auto create thumbnails
The resized JPG images will be saved next to the originals. Names of the new pictures will be based on the original names, with a suffix indicating their size. For example, the resized version of MyPhoto.jpg will be called MyPhoto-400.jpg, where the number 400 indicates the size of the picture. You can go to the official Picture Resizer website and play around with the “Renaming wizard” for more examples.

Like I said earlier, other than controlling the output of the images based on the name of the application, you can combine it with command line parameters. Here is a official page with all the command line and examples.

With a command like this combined with the file name, I am able to generate thumbnails on all JPG images found in C:\ drive and save the thumbnails to C:\resized. The JPG images will be resized to 30% with a low compression quality for speed.

PhotoResizeP30ROL.exe C:\ -c C:\resized

Other than that, if you just run the program by itself, you can actually install a context menu for you to easily resize the image by right clicking on a folder or JPG file and select Resize Picture.
picture resizer options
My only gripe with Picture Resize is that it only process JPG image file types and no other image formats such as BMP, PNG, GIF, and etc. Would be a perfect tool, or can even be used by forensics to digg out all the images saved on computer if the author if this tool “RealWorld Graphics” can make it to support more image formats.

[ Visit Picture Resize Website ]


Related posts:
  • Extend 200+ Image Support for Windows Picture and Fax Viewer in Windows XP
  • Hide MP3 audio inside GIF picture
  • Find Out the Command Line Location When Windows Opens a Window
  • Modify computer’s MBR using command line
  • Sending Email Using Command Line Useful for Downtime Alert Notification