Batch File Conversion
Resizing Images With Irfanview

Resizing Images

You work hard to take great pictures for your store or auction listings only to find that they are too big. Some sites automatically resize your pictures for you, but often they make them too small or compress them too much (in order for them to save storage space!) so that your listings no longer look great. You want to control the size of your images yourself, but you find manually resizing each one in turn is just too much work or you don't even know where to begin. There are so many things to figure out. There are so many questions. This page may hold exactly the answers you need.

The Software You Need:

Irfanview (pronounced: ear-fan-view) is a very useful, very easy to use, graphic viewer and manipulation program. It doesn't have all of the features of larger graphics design programs like Paint Shop Pro or Photo Shop, but it is one of the quickest and easiest ways to resize a large batch of images all at the same time. You can get your copy of Irfanview here if you don't already have one:

http://www.irfanview.net/

Irfanview is free, but a donation is encouraged, though not required, if you find it useful and continue to use it. We believe that supporting development of this type of project is good for everyone. The requested donation is 10 Euros (about US$12). Use the "Support Irfanview" link in the left-side menu on the home page.

Getting Started:

The first thing you want to do is take all the pictures you will want to use for your listings you plan to do at this time. Transfer them from your camera to your computer. Your camera probably came with software to do this. It likely allows you to rename your pictures too. Most cameras assign a numeric name to the pictures. You want to name them with a name that is relavent to the item. Note that although spaces and special characters are probably allowed in filenames on your computer, for Internet use you should NEVER use a space in the filename. Stay away from other characters like &, #, %, etc. too. Use ONLY lowercase letters, numbers, the dash character (-) or the underscore (_). This will prevent a lot of problems you might otherwise have.

If you are using more than one picture in a listing, use some form of consecutive naming, like:

blue_dress-1.jpg
blue_dress-2.jpg
blue_dress-3.jpg

or

plushtoy221-a.jpg
plushtoy221-b.jpg
plushtoy221-c.jpg


Keep your names short but unique. Remember not to duplicate names you have used before.

Put all the pictures into the same folder (or directory) on your computer. Create an empty folder where your resized images will be going. You need to remember where these folders are. Knowing how to navigate through the folder structure on your computer is another topic altogether, but if you don't know this already it is something you really need to learn.

Once you have your pictures properly named and placed in the folder on your computer, close your camera software and open Irfanview. When Irfanview opens the first screen you will see is this:

Click on the file button which pulls down a menu, like this:

From this drop-down menu select "Batch Conversion/Rename..." which will open this window:

Use the navigation function at the top right to locate the folder where you stored your images. When you locate it, your files (names) will show in the box below the navigation function. Decide which files you wish to work with at this time. You may want to resize only some of the files or you may want to do all of them. Using the buttons in the vertical column add the files you will be resizing to the white box on the left.

Next, select the folder you created to hold the resized files. Do this with the "Browse" button about half way down the right side. You will be working with a batch conversion. Click the "Select Advanced Options" button which will open this window:

You will want to tick "Resize" and select "Set New Size" and "Set long size to" and fill in the value for resizing. 500 pixels is about right for use on Main Street Mall Online. Other sites may require a different value. Be sure to tick "Preserve aspect ratio" so your pictures don't become skewed. When you have made these selections click the "OK" button and you will be returned to the second screen.

Click the "Start" button to begin the transfer process. You will see a new window that will show the process and indicate any errors.

When done, click "Exit". You will find your resized files in the folder you specified as the output directory. Converting the size of a large number of files in this manner is fast and easy.

Irfanview has a lot more features available. You can experiment to see what they do and which you may want to use, but the process outlined above is all you need to resize your files for use on selling sites.