Friday, January 6, 2012

SONNY, LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MULTIPLE SCLEROS... UHM, IMAGE RESIZING

What the what: find a freeware capable of resizing multiple images (.jpg and .png mostly) so that their width becomes 500 px and their height keeps the aspect ratio. (This sounds boring...)

Why the what: so I can use those images in a photo gallery, making the "next" and "previous” buttons remain in the same place. You know, to achieve overall sexiness. (No, still boring.)

How the what long: less than 5 minutes. 2 minutes to download and install it and 3 minutes to take a quick look at the options, then click "resize all images to my bidding, you pathetic plebeian byte-midget". (Will you be berating people?)

How the what: Mr. Google will help me when I say something like "mass image resize free". (Hey, I like Google too! Maybe I should read on.)

What the what do I expect: a simple, easy to use (I just want to resize my images, not go through Adobe-sized pile of options which I, like any sane humanoid, can’t and don’t want to understand), nicely designed, quick, little piece of software, without any pop-ups, trojans, or other evils. (Is this going to be a tl;dr techno babble? I’m warning you!)


Here the what we go:

Fotosizer
  Oh. I see now why it's free. It allows me either to resize them one by one (wow, that's a stretch of a word mass-resize) or get randomly resized images, with their dimensions based on the keep-aspect-ratio of the first image! Good. Damn those other images. I call upon “prima imago”, the right to virtually fornicate with any image named 1.jpg, 01.png and such. Awesome! And by awesome I mean unjustifiably retarded.


Verdict: 1 star (It actually is able to do mass resizing,
however craptacular it may be.)


Batch picture resizer

  Ok, if when you go to the toilet, out comes a string of Unix code instead of ca-ca (yes it is hard to differentiate the two most of the time) then this is the one for you, dear iSir. Listen to this. Well, read. You move the .exe file to the desktop and then drag-and-drop your images onto it. What? Miracles didn't happen? Where.the.what.are.my.options? None. Their web site teaches me I actually access the options by renaming the .exe file. I did. To straight2recyclebinUpieceofcrud.exe.


Verdict: no stars (You killed all the constellations
with your epitardedness! Darth.exe!)


Berberus mass image resizer

  Sweet demon of sodomy! I download it and want to install it. Cnet's download.com installer pops out and proudly announces I should download and install the software (uhm, I thought I already did?) Because it's safe, tested and spyware free. Why would you say that unless... Eeek! Away from my hard drive you succubus! I force-close it and google for another place to download this obviously epic software. I download it from brothersoft.com. Brothers are usually good, right? Oh wait. Cain, right? Too late. Again one of those annoying web installers, but wait! Avira pops up! You sons of whorrific whores! You dare? My unsmitable free antivirus will emasculate you and your puny attempts to get my credit card number and the length of my penis (both being huge numbers). TR/dropper.gen you say? Die!


Verdict: -1 stars (Yes, it's minus one,
you bastards owe me a star!)


Multiple Image Resizer .NET

  Oh boy, this one uses Microsoft .NET Framework. You know, the thing you have to have on your PC but never actually use. Or you do, but have no idea when or why. Allrighty, this one not only works well and has all the options I wanted or pretended to want, it also looks very sleek. And does its chores flawlessly. One can only understand my surprise when one goes to the web page of this software. Ouch. Down syndrome meets color blindness. I peek at the source code. Eeek! You use .net 4 which was developed earlier this year, yet you use tables in html coding which are enough of a reason for kids to throw feces at you in the street, you bohemian caveman. Well, I'm not even searching more, this one works perfectly! Oh wait. I take a gander at the image sizes. Whaa? They're more than doubled. ::testing:: Wow, it doubles the size of the image even if I set it to the same size as the original (so actually no resizing takes place). I play with resolution and other indecipherable options. Nothing. Well, good for you, you Mr. Sleek-look-but-don't-care-about-image-size!


Verdict: 4 stars (It is a good software. Good enough
I take that half of a star and shove it up its source code.)


Fast image resizer

  Ok, this one looks and feels like it's from 1979. And funnily enough is the only one that does the wanted job properly. I just set the width to 500 px, height to let’s say 9001px (yes, it's over 9000!!!), set the output folder and voila. Plus, extra mad props for not blowing up the file size. Quick, effective, and ugly. That's how we like ‘em.


Verdict: 4,99 stars (That's how much I care about your ugliness.
You dawg.)


Freeimageconverter

  This is the only one that doesn't have drag-and-drop, which is just gauche. On the other hand it does have the nicely visible and easily findable option to select the resized image quality in percentages. So we can maneuver the file quality/size quite easily. Too sparkling bad it fails miserably at resizing. As if that matters.


Verdict: 0,72 stars (I know you meant well. It's just that
you aren't capable of achieving above-abysmal things.)


Image tuner

  If image resizers were shoe-wearing turds, this one would be the crud on their soles. Visually - very good, practically - think gonorrhea and diarrhea at the same time. Did nothing I wanted. Pretty and useless. That’s how we hate ‘em.


Verdict: 1 super shiny star (Because it has an elephant
for its icon, and we all agree that elephunts are phun.)

The absolute winner:

adionSoft Fast Image Resizer

Get it at: http://adionsoft.net/fastimageresize

The conclusion:
  I'm sure that if I took more time testing these softwares, some of them would turn out to be better, some worse. But that's not the point. I wanted a simple and effective software for an average cheap-camera-wielding joe, not for a nerd that knows what the options like "IFAST DCT method" or "EXIF orientation tag" really stand for. They stand for “I’m resizing these pics of rare rocks from my awsm collection”. That’s fine too. I personally wanted to resize these boobelicious boobs and buttelicious butts I took on the beach this weekend, but yours is a fine hobby too.