Every now and then I come across forum posts asking how to resize images in OS X. While there is a function to resize images in iPhoto 06, it is far from being simple, particularly for the new user.
In iPhoto 06 you need to select an image, or images, click on File | Export, then specify image size, location and finally export. It would be much easier to be able to right-click on an image and select Resize. Hopefully Apple will do something about it in iLife 07.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of third party applications that come to the rescue.
The one I use is a very simple and free application – ImageWell. One thing I like about it is ability to add rounded borders to images. Totally cool, I use it all the time on this website.
Below are few others, some are free, some you have to pay for, but you can download trial versions and try it before deciding which way to go.
Sizerox is an application that resizes your “JPEG”, “TIFF”, “PNG” or “PSD” images and saves them as “JPEG”. You can easily resize, rename, crop, rotate and watermark your images from your digital camera or scanner to send them with e-mails, to use them on the web or to upload them to your iPod
EasyCrop is a small application that crops and resizes images, has a live preview, supports drag and drop and has built-in screen capture tool
EasyBatchPhoto frees you from repetitive tasks of converting, resizing and watermarking images by processing hundreds, or even thousands, of images with a single drag-and-drop.
iResize – Batch resize and compress images in .jpeg, .pict, .tiff,.gif, .psd formats.
SmallImage is a simple and efficient tool to batch process JPEG files, resize them, recompress them, remove embedded profiles and make them ready for the web or store them efficiently.
Then there are other options, such as Apple scripts that let you resize images by just dragging and dropping images onto a script icon (on Mac OSX Hints) or even Automator actions, one of which is Resize Pictures Suite.
And finally let’s not forget that Apple has done pretty good job when it comes to resizing images for emailing. Not perfect, but it works fine in most of the cases.
When in iPhoto, select an image, or several images, click on Email icon and choose from four options: small, medium, large or full size. You can do the same in an email window, look at the bottom right.
Of course, you can do resizing with applications such as Photoshop, Fireworks, Graphic Converter. But if all you need it to resize image, you don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on these applications.
