Windows 7 App Pick: Image Resizer 3

App type: Shell extension; photo editor
Publisher:  Brice Lambson
Price: FREE

Download Image Resizer 3 Preview 1

Way back in 2001, I reviewed Microsoft's PowerToys for Windows XP, which included a neat little utility called Image Resizer. According to my review, "Image Resizer allows you to resize a picture or group of pictures, without changing the originals. It works in a manner similar to the Send Pictures via Email functionality that's built into Windows XP, but with easier control over the sizing options and, of course, a nice batching functionality for resizing multiple images at the same time."

Image Resizer was a neat and useful little utility, and it had some useful resizing presets, including 640x480 (Small), 800x600 (Medium), 1024x768 (Large) and 240x320 (which, humorously, was Handheld PC-sized, for the Windows CE-based Pocket PC and other handheld devices of the day). But as Windows matured, Image Resizer and the other PowerToys fell by the wayside, ignored by Microsoft and made obsolete by the ongoing evolution of Windows.

Thankfully, there's now a modern replacement, Image Resizer 3 for Windows, a modern take on the PowerToy of old. Like its predecessor, Image Resizer 3 for Windows lets you right-click on a picture (or multi-select a group of pictures), choose Resize Pictures from the resulting context menu, and then choose a resizing preset or, new to this version, a custom size.

In a nice nod to the present, the new version of Image Resizer has more modern, widescreen presets. These include 854 x 480 (small), 1366 x 768 (Medium), 1920 x 1080 (Large), and 320 x 480 (Mobile). And like the original, the new pictures are renamed according to the preset you choose. So if you resize a photo named Paris from the top of Notre Dame using the Small preset, the resized version will be named Paris from the top of Notre Dame (Small).

Image Resizer won't replace the original picture(s) unless you tell it to, and an Advanced link points to coming functionality (Image Resizer is currently in a pre-release preview version) that will include JPEG quality level configuration, user-defined default sizes, user-defined filename formats, and the optional ability to strip meta-data. But even in its current form, Image Resizer already works just like the Image Resizer we knew from years gone by and it's just as useful. It's also just as easy to recommend.

Thanks to Brent Burzycki for the tip.