It has been almost one month since I went on a camping trip to Margaret River with Igor and his dad, and I've been wanting to upload an share a few photos. But each image file is over 2MB and would take quite a long time to upload, and with over 300 images to process, it would take a long time to open, resize and save each image… or would it?
At work, I use GIMP with a plugin called David's Batch Processor (DBP) to quickly resize multiple images. And here's how:
First, you need to have GIMP (a free and open source image editing program) installed on your computer.
Next, download DBP from the plugin creator's website. There are a few download links to choose from. I have opted for the Windows .ZIP file for version 1.1.8 of the plugin.
After you have downloaded the .ZIP file, unzip the file and it should contain a .EXE file called "dbp.exe".
To install the plugin, copy (or cut) dbp.exe to the plugins folder for GIMP. On my PC, which is running Windows 7, the plugins folder for GIMP is located at "C:Program Files (x86)GIMP-2.0libgimp2.0plug-ins".
Before installation:
After installation:
If you have have copied dbp.exe to the correct folder, "Batch Process…" should now appear under the "Filters" menu in GIMP.
Time to resize some images!
You don't need to have any images open with GIMP to use the plugin. To quickly resize multiple images, run the plugin by clicking "Batch Process…" under the "Filters" menu in GIMP.
As you can see, the plugin can do more than just resize multiple images. It can turn/rotate, blur, adjust brightness/contrast/saturation, crop and sharpen multiple images easily, but I mainly use it for resizing images.
Step 1: Choose the images that you want to resize.
Open GIMP and run the Batch Process plugin. Under the "Input" tab, click the "Add Files" button, which will then open another window where you can browse the folders on your computer and select the images that you would like to resize.
After you have selected all the images that you would like to resize, close the "Add Image Files" window. The Input tab should now display a list of the images files that you have selected.
Step 2: Choose the size that you would like to resize your images to.
Click on the "Resize" tab and modify the settings.
In this case, I want to make all my images smaller with the maximum width and height as 900 pixels. To do that, I use the following settings:
– Tick the "Enabled" checkbox
– Choose the "Absolute" radio button
– Enter "900" as the Height
– Enter "900" as the Width
– Choose "Inside" from the "Fit" drop-down list
Step 3: Choose where you would like to save the resized images.
Click on the "Rename" tab. By default, the resized images will be saved in the same folder as the original ones. However, the plugin will not allow you to overwrite any files. Therefore you need to either save the images in a different folder and/or select a prefix or suffix (postfix) to add to the file name.
When I'm dealing with just a few images, I just save the resized images in the same folder as the original and add a prefix such as "_" ('image.jpg' becomes '_image.jpg'). But since I'm dealing with hundreds of images in this example, I have chosen to save my resized images in a subfolder called "Resize".
Click the "Select Dir" button to choose a different folder to save the resized images in. You don't need to modify the other settings in the "Rename" tab.
Step 4: Choose the file format that you would like to save your images as.
Click on the "Output" tab. By default, the files will be saved as .BMP images. That would result in large files, so I will be choosing the "JPG" option from the drop-down list.
After you select "JPG" from the list, additional options will appear. While you don't need to change anything from the default setting, I prefer to change the Quality from "0.75" (75%) to "0.85" (85%). Higher quality will result in a higher file size, lower quality will result in a smaller file size.
Step 5: Run the plugin.
After you have modified all relevant settings to your preference, you can click the "Test" button to see an example of what the first image will look like after running the plugin.
If you're happy with all the settings, click the "Start" button to begin processing your images.
Depending on your computer's processor speed and memory, and how many images you are processing, it may take a while for the plugin to finish resizing all your images. I find that it completes the processing very quickly, and certainly much faster than opening each individual image in GIMP to resize the images myself.