This is by far the best little image resize program I’ve ever come across! I highly recommend you download it, and learn some of it’s features. It is really easy to get started.

First of all go to http://www.obviousidea.com/windows-software/light-image-resizer and click on the green button “Download Free Now”.

For a really quick getting started, watch this 30 second video on YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siQzcF9h9TY&feature=player_embedded

I really like the fact you can right click on an image in your File Explorer and select Light Image Resizer from there. Or you can open it as a program and open files in it.

The first part is simple. Either click to open image files, or select a whole folder with images in it.

Next click the Options tab or the Next button. There are a lot of options here. And a few more on the Effects, Misc and Publish tabs. But you don’t need to look at these if you don’t want. Simple select from the first drop down box a profile. So for instance to simply resize some images to upload to your website through the editing tool, you might select the 800×600 Profile. This will knock your photos back to something that will upload easily without timing out.

You could just hit the Process button now and you are done!

For the more adventurous, here are some cool features….
Note you can hit the Preview button at the top right at any time to see what the results will be!

* Click on the New Profile button before playing around with the settings (You don’t want to overwrite one of the standard ones like I did!).

* Put in a custom width and/or height. This is great if you are resizing images for eCommerce products.

* Experiment with the Mode. Center and Crop can have interesting results. Make sure you use the Preview button at the top to see what the result will be.

* Under effects you can even import a watermark and set the transparency and position.

* Filename Mask is an interesting one. With the popup help you can create a name template for the final filename of the new image files. Something like %F_%W will rename the new image files with the original file name and the new width. So you might end up with something like surefire-logo_250.jpg.

* Action will usually be to make new copies.

* Destination can be the original folder, or create a new one.

It is worth spending a few minutes getting your head around this program, so choose some images that don’t matter too much and give it a go!