How to quickly resize pictures before uploading

thenated0g

Drinker of coffee, Maker of things
Mentor
I have been seeing this a lot lately. People uploading pictures straight from the pc or phone. A Lot of times these pictures are raw or pretty close to raw size. This not only impacts the amount of time it takes to upload the picture (and data) but it can make browsing pictures for others very painful. For instance you can go from having to transfer a 7-10 megabyte file down to a 700k file. That's like 90% less data. And this is not affecting picture size or what you see at all. The picture is still big (1920x1080). Think of it as removing the "stuff" your eyes cant see anyways, like what mp3 files did for music sizes. The other thing too is that pictures are not something that is easily "zipped". Or shrunk down in size. This is mainly a server size issue when paying for online forum storage and it also makes backups take way way longer. So here's my suggestion to make life easier for you (uploading), your friends (downloaders), and @flitetest (server payer).

Now there are lots of different ways to do this. For instance if you like to edit your pictures in another program first you can probably just export it do a different size. I usually don't adjust my pictures, i just upload them and so in my opinion the way i am showing is one of the easiest and fastest.

The program i use is here, its a free download: https://www.bricelam.net/ImageResizer/

Once installed you simply select the pictures you want. It could be one or an entire folder. You can even select videos if you dont want to go thru and just grab pictures and it will just ignore the videos and keep going. (I actually use this on my google drive for pictures that are backed up from my phone. It saves me space in my gdrive). Than you just right click and choose "resize"

Here's the settings i use. I like it to replace my pictures with the new ones. But thats just a setting if you want to save your original photos. You can also setup a custom size if you want and adjust the quality level in the advanced tab. I have mine set at 75%.
1553636591552.png


As an example i grabbed a large 8mb picture from the forums and "resized" it.

1553636768718.png

That's a pretty dramatic size reduction. Here is that resized picture posted full size so you can click on it and see for yourself the quality.

221000_bdf349a04cda7b848e4565300457be58 (Large).jpeg
click on the picture to see the 1080 version.

So once its installed the resizer is super quick and easy. Its amazing how much faster you can click thru pictures once they are resized.

My future browsing self thanks you for resizing :)
 

thenated0g

Drinker of coffee, Maker of things
Mentor
Aye, some of those posts with a bunch of images kills my crappy little internet connection. Even if you do not resize them, using thumbnails rather than full size in the body of the post is good practice. To resize them is even better still.
Yes, I didn't even consider that part. Good point. Ill try to minimize my full size pictures.
 

Bricks

Master member
Thanks for bring this up I get really irritated when some one uploads a few pictures in the same post takes awhile for them to download especially since there is no reason for it to be this way..
 

Mad_Mechanic

Well-known member
This is a good thread topic and I would like to add a couple more options for people.

If people have access to a browser, this is the image resizer I like to use. It can resize multiple images at a time.

https://bulkresizephotos.com

Also, for those who don't know, PhotoBucket decided to stop free image hosting links, so now you have to pay to host image links with them. Fear not however, there is a new kid on the block called IMGBB.

https://imgbb.com

It's free, easy to use and what I now use for ALL of my forum image hosting needs (when the forum doesn't have it's own native image upload/hosting).
 

buzzbomb

I know nothing!
I have been seeing this a lot lately. People uploading pictures straight from the pc or phone. A Lot of times these pictures are raw or pretty close to raw size. This not only impacts the amount of time it takes to upload the picture (and data) but it can make browsing pictures for others very painful. For instance you can go from having to transfer a 7-10 megabyte file down to a 700k file. That's like 90% less data. And this is not affecting picture size or what you see at all. The picture is still big (1920x1080). Think of it as removing the "stuff" your eyes cant see anyways, like what mp3 files did for music sizes. The other thing too is that pictures are not something that is easily "zipped". Or shrunk down in size. This is mainly a server size issue when paying for online forum storage and it also makes backups take way way longer. So here's my suggestion to make life easier for you (uploading), your friends (downloaders), and @flitetest (server payer).

Now there are lots of different ways to do this. For instance if you like to edit your pictures in another program first you can probably just export it do a different size. I usually don't adjust my pictures, i just upload them and so in my opinion the way i am showing is one of the easiest and fastest.

The program i use is here, its a free download: https://www.bricelam.net/ImageResizer/

Once installed you simply select the pictures you want. It could be one or an entire folder. You can even select videos if you dont want to go thru and just grab pictures and it will just ignore the videos and keep going. (I actually use this on my google drive for pictures that are backed up from my phone. It saves me space in my gdrive). Than you just right click and choose "resize"

Here's the settings i use. I like it to replace my pictures with the new ones. But thats just a setting if you want to save your original photos. You can also setup a custom size if you want and adjust the quality level in the advanced tab. I have mine set at 75%.
View attachment 127433

As an example i grabbed a large 8mb picture from the forums and "resized" it.

View attachment 127434
That's a pretty dramatic size reduction. Here is that resized picture posted full size so you can click on it and see for yourself the quality.

View attachment 127435
click on the picture to see the 1080 version.

So once its installed the resizer is super quick and easy. Its amazing how much faster you can click thru pictures once they are resized.

My future browsing self thanks you for resizing :)

Too braindead to actually absorb the post. I see what you're saying though, and I am definitely guilty. I want everyone to see The GLORY of what I think is glorious. I post everything full size and at the largest resolution the camera on my phone is capable of. I'm coming back here when I'm not brain dead from work.

It just makes sense that if I want the maximum number of members of this Forum Family to see my pics, I should format them so that they can see my pics, Formatting for mobile devices? I'm kind of old-school for that. Thanks to your post and the helpful members of our Forum Family, I'll make it happen. Thank you. I'll also start posting thumbnails instead of full pictures. This old dog can be taught! :)
 

Bricks

Master member
Too braindead to actually absorb the post. I see what you're saying though, and I am definitely guilty. I want everyone to see The GLORY of what I think is glorious. I post everything full size and at the largest resolution the camera on my phone is capable of. I'm coming back here when I'm not brain dead from work.

It just makes sense that if I want the maximum number of members of this Forum Family to see my pics, I should format them so that they can see my pics, Formatting for mobile devices? I'm kind of old-school for that. Thanks to your post and the helpful members of our Forum Family, I'll make it happen. Thank you. I'll also start posting thumbnails instead of full pictures. This old dog can be taught! :)


You can do full size just use a smaller pixel format most screens and people will never know the difference in quality of the photo.
 

thenated0g

Drinker of coffee, Maker of things
Mentor
You can do full size just use a smaller pixel format most screens and people will never know the difference in quality of the photo.
Yes, the thumbnail will definitely help for people are really really bad connections, but the main thing is sizing down the files. As you said, then even showing full size photos will be snappy.
 

Fidget

Active member
Don't disagree with this idea, although every step takes time & makes it harder to share. Hopefully the next generation of forum software will offer resizing as an embedded service. Seems like the kind of thing that would make a good Wordpress add in.
 

Gazoo

Well-known member
On an android phone, you can open the picture and the press the power and volume down buttons simultaneously for a second. This will tale a screenshot and reduce the size significantly.

On Windows, you can use the printscreen function to do the same. Or, as I usually do, use the "Snipping Tool".
 

Bricks

Master member
On many posts if I open them and it takes for ever to download pics I will not ever go back to that post as each time it gets opened wait wait wait. I am not on the fastest internet but it is DSL
 

mayan

Legendary member
Another tip that comes to mind. If you are uploading from your phone send the pictures that you want to upload to a friend via whatsapp and have him send them back to you, the pictures you'll get back will have their weight reduced to about 250kb files :).
 

Hoomi

Master member
There's also a real cheap and dirty way to reduce the file size. Share the photos on Facebook, then once they're uploaded, right-click, select "save as," and copy them back to your computer.
 

buzzbomb

I know nothing!
I use the image resizer and it is painless and helps others see what I am posting. Personally, I wish everyone used it. :)
 

Hoomi

Master member
I first tried a resizing in MS Paint, but it only reduced the file size by about half. One photo, the original file off the camera was 3.46Mb. The Paint reduced file was 1.5Mb. Uploading the Paint reduced file to Facebook and then resaving it, the file is 128Kb.

I have Lightroom on my computer, and I may play around with it for resizing as well, but for the quick and dirty tonight, Facebook worked fine. :)
 

buzzbomb

I know nothing!
I first tried a resizing in MS Paint, but it only reduced the file size by about half. One photo, the original file off the camera was 3.46Mb. The Paint reduced file was 1.5Mb. Uploading the Paint reduced file to Facebook and then resaving it, the file is 128Kb.

I have Lightroom on my computer, and I may play around with it for resizing as well, but for the quick and dirty tonight, Facebook worked fine. :)
I've got the resizer on my program bar. Each time I want to upload a pic, I just click it, navigate to the pic and hit resize. Done. The program keeps a high enough resolution to be useful, and downsizes the weight of ot so you can load it on any device. No uploading and reloading and all that.

Quick. Easy. Simple. Plus everyone gets to enjoy the picture you cared enough to upload. It's a win, win. I didn't start this thread. It wasn't my idea. I am on board 100% though. It just works. :)
 

bracesport

Legendary member
I’m guilty - I will improve too - a quick app download (6 times smaller) will sort the phone Picts - I’ll do the same for the desktop!

F63F112A-D363-4915-95AB-52FD7E7C2B56.png
 
Last edited:

basslord1124

Master member
I use a program for Android called Photo & Picture Resizer

It works well with the occasional ad. My pics are generally 5-6MB when taken...and I can set what size to bring the picture down to. For the forums I try to keep em at 200-300KB.

I have 1 issue with posting pics on the forum and it is my stubbornness that I am not sure if I will ever get around. I love the speediness of what these little mini computers aka smartphones can do. Take some pictures, resize them, shoot video, get on the internet, call up someone, etc. BUT, I hate typing on the forums using my smartphone. I grew up in the early days of personal computers and the internet. And I prefer typing my long, boring, and sometimes funny forum posts on a computer. So I'm kinda torn where I take and edit pics with my smartphone, transfer those pics to my temporary cloud storage, so I can type the message and post the pics on a computer. I know...it's weird! :confused::oops:
 
Last edited: