Have you ever downloaded a Linux ISO or maybe someone’s modified Linux operating system and the file extension is .ISO? An ISO file is a image archive of a CD or a DVD. ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization, which is supported by many software vendors. You can also open these .ISO files with such software like WinZip, 7zip or WinRAR. Alright so now I briefly told you what ISO’s are, lets talk about how we get theses images (.ISO) files on a CD or a DVD.
A while ago you may saw my older post about a Microsoft Powertoy-Image Resize clone. Of course this was just a clone of the program to be use with Windows Vista. I have used it many times and it works well but the quality of the photos really degrade and it bothers the heck out of me.
I recently came across a new program for Windows XP or Vista called VSO Image Resizer – this is one great handy program. VSO Image Resizer is a free program, but they do have a paid version.
With this free resize image software, you can create e-mail friendly versions of your images, load them faster, move them easily from folder to folder, change their format, edit large numbers of image files/batch image resize and thus save space on your hard drive. Using high resolution 1600×1200 for creating wallpaper or file-sharing you can save your memory. VSO Image Resizer can also change file names using a template and you can add your own watermark with transparency support.
VSO Image resizer is integrated into the Windows explorer shell, right click on your pictures and start working on your pictures !
I have not noticed any degrade of image quality and it works very well when you are doing batch jobs. How ever if you do a ton of photography like I do, then this isn’t a very great way of resizing photos because though it might look alright, but there could be lost of data. So use Photoshop or something similar!
This is the interface, as you can tell it is very clean and easy to use. Also you can see all the neat features it offers!
And this is the processing box.
So if you have a ton of photos to resize for facebook to increase upload time, this is the program to use! I know you will like it and it is a better tool than the powertoy one. So download it now!
You remember the Powertoy “Image Resizer?” Well it was a very handy tool to have because it could resize a large batch of images. I used it so much when I had Windows XP and that Powertoy was only for Windows XP and when Vista rolled out, Microsoft didn’t update the code on that application so it wouldn’t run on Vista. I thought that was just awful and I couldn’t find a decent Powertoy like that at the time Vista came out. There were other tools sort of like that but you had to buy them and they had ton of ads on them. A few weeks ago I came across the Image Resizer Powertoy Clone for Windows Vista. It’s a life saver!
You can grab the Powertoy here
To use it, all you have to do is highlight the images you want to resize, right-click, and select Resize Pictures. You will then receive a dialogue window prompting you to choose a size from the most common, or you can click Advanced for more control.
It will not overwrite the images. Instead, it will rename the copy to have the image size after the original file name, how ever you can overwrite the file you want to do. If you do something wrong there is no way in recovering the image. So make sure you backed it up and or know what you are doing first.
Amanda on 
