Fotosizer for Small Businesses

Simple Small Portable Business

Fotosizer – Convert all your pictures for the Internet with one click.

Fotosizer is a free program, (at this time), that has saved me and thousands of other people hundreds of hours resizing pictures to load on the Internet. It is easy to set up, easy to use and best of all there is a standard and portable version.

Whether it is uploading pictures for Facebook, Picasa, sending pictures to a friend in email or uploading pictures to your website, almost everyone these days uses digital pictures in one way or another. For businesses, this tiny program can be worth a lot in time savings.

Here is something in which many people are not aware. Pictures from your camera are quite often three to four times higher resolution than you need for most Internet applications. A picture that has a resolution of 300 dpi will look much better than a 72 dpi picture when printed at a photo center or on your computer. However, when viewed on the Internet, there is almost no noticeable difference between the two. That is, except for the size of the file and the speed at which it loads on the viewers screen. It also makes a big difference when trying to send these files as attachments or uploading to your website. The larger files can take forever to send and in some cases limit how many pictures you can send at one time.

Fotosizer allows you to set up presets so you only have to set it up once. Then you simply drag and drop all of your pictures into a central drop-in area, push the “Start” button and within seconds you have new, lower resolution versions of your pictures created. All of these photos will have a different name extension so as to not ruin the original versions of your pictures.

As many of you know, I am a big fan of portable programs. I prefer to use the portable version so it is not actually installed on my machine, but is always there ready to be used at any time. I have a folder that I created on my computer labeled “Programs Used but Not Installed”. This folder contains dozens of these kinds of programs that easily cut hours off of every work day and yet cost nothing. Best of all, because they are not actually installed, they don’t bog down my computer with a lot of junk.

If you are interested in trying out Fotosizer (download here) I have added the setting below that we use to convert photos for placing on websites. I have also included a screen shot of the interface and the settings we use. If you use many photos at all in your small business, please give it a try and save tons of time and money.

Options:
(Check Everything)

Resize setting:
Preset Size – 640×480
Check – “Do not enlarge if smaller”
Check – “Maintain aspect ratio”

Effects:
(Don’t Check Anything)

Rotation:
(Don’t Check Anything)

Miscellaneous settings:
Check “Change DPI to 96”

Destination settings:
Destination folder – “Save to folder” – “Same as original”
Output Format – JPEG (JPG)
Filename – Custom
Filename mask – %F_%Wx%H (this gives your new picture a different name with the new dimensions)