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VSO Image Resizer - Windows

Written by Marco Conti Monday, 11 May 2009 10:14

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VSO Image Resizer is a low cost application that should be in every web developer or web site owner toolkit. VSO Image resizer allows you to resize one or multiple images right from your windows desktop (or any other folder) without opening a dedicated graphical editor or having to process images one by one.

VSO Image Resizer (VSOIR) is very easy to use:

1. Select your images by either Shift-Click or Ctrl-Click (contiguous or not Contiguous selection) their filenames or icons.
2. Next choose "VSO Image Resizer" among your contextual menus (R-Click menu) choices.
3. At this point, if you have not purchased the software yet, you'll be presented by a bit of "Nagware" ("Nagware" is software that "nags" you until you decide to buy the software license).
4. Next you'll need to choose what size and the way you want to resize your images: a given size in pixels or a percentage of the original.
5. Another choice you need to make is whether to create a copy (and if so, where?) or if you want to overwrite the original.
   
6. VSOIR provides for default choices as well as custom once and learning the interface should be an easy task for anyone with even a passing knowledge of web graphics.

The output of VSOIR is as good as that of Photoshop using the "Save for Web and Devices" feature. In fact, I performed a few experiements saving the same image in Photoshop CS4 and VSOIR and the results were pretty interesting:

My original image was 3,135kb straight off my Canon DSRL.

I first saved a copy at 640x480 setting and 90% quality from VSOIR. The resulting image was 84K.

Next I repeated the process but this time in Photoshop. The first time I used my default quality at a bit over 60% and 640x480. The image "weight" was 63KB, about 20kb lighter than VSO.

But when I repeated the process, this time using 90% quality, the resulting image came in at 176KB, considerably larger than the VSO output.

So, I went back to VSOIR and this time I saved at 60% quality: the image was now 42kb, once again smaller than the Photoshop version using the "Save for web" feature.

But how do they look? Judge for yourself. Click on the image at right to enlarge my side by side comparison. of the two images both processed at 640x480 and 60% quality. The VSOIR version is on the left and the Photoshop version on the right. Hard to tell, the PSD version is a bit brighter for some reason, but as far as resolution, they look almost identical to me. And the VSOIR image is lighter than the PSD one.

Above all, even if VSOR's quality was slightly inferior, the time advantage and the inherent low resolution of web imagery would make it a sure winner in terms of practicality.

Imagine being able to process 200 product images in a matter of 30 seconds. Even if you are advanced enough to create your own "actions" in Photoshop, the set up and processing takes longer than that. Plus, you need to open Photoshop first.

The only missing feature that would make this program a world beater is the ability to place images on a differnt size canvas. As many of you may know, especially when displaying images in a gallery or store setting, having "portrait" and "landscape" images next to each other can result in messy looking pages. It's not the images themselves but the captions and titles that go with them.

If VSOIR could create a square canvas to place the picture in, it would stramline what is now a necessary but cuumbersome and time consuming job.

VSO Image Resizer is a little treasure that deserves more exposure and certainly deserves to be among every web developer and website owner's toolkit.
For $14.00 it is the steal of the century and certainly deserving of your money.

Download VSO Image Resizer

Rating 4 stars out of 5