Thursday, May 1, 2008

Windows XP’s built-in image resizing utility

If you’ve ever had to resize a group of digital picture files, you’ve likely launched your image editing program and then resized each image individually — this is an extremely time-consuming task. Windows XP has a built-in image resizing utility buried inside the Send Pictures Via E-Mail dialog box that can quickly and easily resize a large group of digital picture files at once. Follow these steps:
  1. Press [Windows]E to launch Windows Explorer.
  2. Make sure the Tasks pane is visible. (The Folders button acts like a toggle switch. If the Tree pane is showing, clicking the Folders button will display the Tasks pane. Click the Folders button if the Tree pane is showing.)
  3. Open the folder containing the group of digital pictures you want to resize. Select the group.
  4. Under the File And Folder Task list, select the E-Mail The Selected Items command.
  5. When you see the Send Pictures Via E-Mail dialog box, click the Show More Options link to expand the dialog box.
  6. Select a radio button next to one of the available sizes and click OK. A new mail message window containing the resized digital pictures as attachments will appear.
  7. Pull down the File menu, select the Save Attachments command, and save all the attachments to a different folder.
  8. Close the mail message window and click No in the Save Changes dialog box.

Note: This tip applies to both Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional.