unkabob,

The original photo [or video] has a fixed number of pixels. Adding pixels [enlarging] or removing them [reducing] will lose some quality. When you enlarge, pixels are added through interpolation, which is basically guessing what color and brightness they should be based on the pixels surrounding each new one. When you reduce the size, you're throwing pixels away, each containing data.

Bill, make sure you don't leave a space on either sides of the serial number.

PaulF,

Some quality loss is unavoidable when you enlarge or reduce the size of a photo or image. BTW that's why vector graphics are common for illustrations etc. -- as instructions on what lines and shapes to draw where, and using what color, they can be resized almost infinitely without loss. Franzis makes an app that's designed to do a better job resizing, but I can't say how effective it is [might be a good future GOTD?]. Image rotation is another matter entirely, and can be done without loss, though not every app can do so with jpg images -- I use XnView for that. Converting to grayscale is usually pretty straightforward -- you just toss the color data -- but there are specialized apps, plug-ins etc. that use some of that color data to enhance the results, e.g. Franzis Black & White projects.

mike, Are you sure? I heard of an application (only for jpeg files) which is supposed to reduce the size of the file without losing quality (hence my question here).

PaulF,

Reducing an image without losing quality is possible.

Images are stored in a compressed manner, which is why you may not see a lot of reduction by putting them into a Zip file, compared to how much smaller a txt file can be when placed into a Zip file. Zip files and graphic files use similar compression methods, such as counting the number of times that an entity is repeated, and then storing the data for the first and the number of times it needs to be repeated to do the compression and decompression (the entity being a single byte in a txt file and a pixel in an image file). If an image has several pixels in a row that are the same, then one pixel that is different but so close that the average eye cannot detect the difference, then the row continues with more of the ones that are like the ones just before the unique one, that one can unique pixel can effectively be changed to be the same as the others, and no one would actually notice the change. Before that change though, the pixel has to be examined as part of a vertical line or diagonal line (or other angles) that may need the unique pixel to remain as it was. There are several things to consider before changing that one pixel, but within a common sized photo, there are often multiple places where pixels can be changed. So compression of an image can occur with a detailed examination of the pixels and what they are surrounded by. As long as the human eye cannot detect the change, the image can be compressed "without losing quality" so-to-speak.

A lot of the programs use common image manipulation libraries and do not deviate from the methods that the library implements. Other programs may have developed their own algorithms.

Programs such as MSTech Image Resize Basic may implement different methods compared to their competitor(s). As a result, you might find that one program can do a better job than another for one image, and a different product might do better for a different image. Sometimes one program can do a better job with smaller images, or larger images, or 24-bit images, or the format of the image (e.g., png, jpeg, etc.). If the size deviations of the different programs are not far off from each other, you can pick one to become "your favorite" without too much worry, especially if you are doing "batch" alterations. If you are refining a single image, you might choose to use a full image/photo editor to tweak the image to fit a specific size. IF the image is going to be printed on photo paper that is one thing, but if it is going to be used in a newspaper or similar, then it is going to be made into a half-tone anyway.

M. H., You wanted to say FastStone Photo Resizer

PaulF, no, I indeed meant Faststone Image Viewer, as this one is the tool I use for batch processing. Maybe Photo Resizer is just the standalone part of the Image Viewer's batch processing?!

M. H., I've been using Faststone Image Resizer and Image Viewer for years. They are separate programs - and as far as I can tell, only Image Resizer of the two does batch and individual image resizing.

Dan_L, they are separate programs, but the Image Viewer has an elaborated batch processing feature as well!

Dear Pedro,

Thanks for using our product.

- Setup needs to close the Windows Explorer to register some tools in shell menu.

- Also it does not install any monitor on your computer.

It just install the software and runs it after the setup.

If you have any question, please don't hesitate to contact us at
support@mstech-co.com

Best Regards,
Mary Johnson,
MSTech Support Team

Pedro, thnx - I considered to install it (to replace eventually my old jpeg-resampler), but I really don´t want to have another "monitoring" sw in the background.
And when I look on the abilities, I see that it is really an extremly "basic" sw (even if I compare it with my ten years old free solution) - what is not necesserily a bad approach for people not needing sophisticated changes and prefering simple user interface...

Pedro, ph

You will have to right-click its icon that sits in the system tray area to exit the program .

(Maybe MS Tech should offer an option to close or minimize to the system tray area)

Take care

Thanks Mary,

I've been a MS Systems Technician a good many years, and there is no need to terminate MS Explorer to register any shell menu entries, those are added to the registry, but you need administrator privileges to do so. The setup icon has a tiny shield to indicate that need. Just don't terminate peoples MS Explorer, it's not right, and not cool.

It does attack itself to the systems tray, so one has to click that and right-click it's icon to close it. How would computer performance become if every app did this?

My comment on this is that I noticed that sometimes it does now show itself in the tray even when it's there. That's why I said it's an hidden monitor, because these systems tray apps are basically monitors, waiting to be called upon.

What I try to say that this is a nice, but small tool, and PC users have lots of these kind of tools. To keep PCs from suffer under all these tools it's important that each of them is designed so that their footprint is as small as possible, and that it's zero when they're not used.

Best regards, Pedro

Pawel , Please check your spam/promotions folder, we sent you an email.