Quick way to make thumbnails?

I'm using Windows XP and I use the power tool "Resize Image" feature on a right click all the time to make a really fast small image to e-mail. I wish it had a setting for an even smaller image to make a quick thumbnail for use on a web page. Does anyone know a quick way to do this in XP? I've been going into my image editing software and doing a resize in there, but that's way too much trouble.

Under file> automate> contact sheet II you can make as many thumbnails as you want and can adjust the actual size as well.

http://www.breezesys.com

Has a html generator that will create jpg thumbnails.

Dan Diercks said:

I'm using Windows XP and I use the power tool "Resize Image"
feature on a right click all the time to make a really fast small
image to e-mail. I wish it had a setting for an even smaller image
to make a quick thumbnail for use on a web page. Does anyone know a
quick way to do this in XP? I've been going into my image editing
software and doing a resize in there, but that's way too much
trouble.

Click to expand...

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Maybe my D60 meters correctly and it is me that is overexposed???

I'm not able to help you but I have a question for you if you don't mind. The " power tool "Resize Image" right click feature on XP I remember before I reformated I was able to right click on a photo and do a quick resize and I loved that feature but since I reformated I don't have it anymore. I figure it was a program I had installed at the time that had the feature. If you have any suggestions how I can get it back I would very much appreciate it.

Thank's

Dan Diercks said:

I'm using Windows XP and I use the power tool "Resize Image"
feature on a right click all the time to make a really fast small
image to e-mail. I wish it had a setting for an even smaller image
to make a quick thumbnail for use on a web page. Does anyone know a
quick way to do this in XP? I've been going into my image editing
software and doing a resize in there, but that's way too much
trouble.

Click to expand...

platscha said:

Under file> automate> contact sheet II you can make as many
thumbnails as you want and can adjust the actual size as well.

Click to expand...

Platcha,

I'm not talking about printing thumbnails. Is that what you're referring to here? I've got QImage and PowerPrint, both which print contact sheets nicely. I mean I'd like to make thumbnails for my web site quickly without having to go into photo editing software life Photoshop or PhotoBrush and resize a picture down to a tiny thumbnail size. In other words, I'd like the convenience of the "Resize Image" feature in the XP powertools, but I need a choice smaller than the "Small" choice that is available.
Dan D.

Dan Diercks said:

I'm using Windows XP and I use the power tool "Resize Image"
feature on a right click all the time to make a really fast small
image to e-mail. I wish it had a setting for an even smaller image
to make a quick thumbnail for use on a web page. Does anyone know a
quick way to do this in XP? I've been going into my image editing
software and doing a resize in there, but that's way too much
trouble.

Click to expand...

Hi, I recorded steps I did to create one thumbnail (to make an photoshop "action") - after that, for the rest of my pictures I just sat back and watched it in "action".

Dan:

PhotoElf is a really excellent program for printing multiple copies and making sheets of many different pictures etc. But in addition, it has a feature for creating web albums. You select as many pics as you want, click a few buttons, and you have a nice web page. The images are represented by their thumbnails in a narrow left hand frame. One click brings up the correspondiong picture. Some of the default settings are poor choices, but once you set it up, it works very well. I say this as someone who has set up many, many pages by hand, complete with custom thumbnails.

A recent example is at: http://users2.ev1.net/~rettner/Piranhas2002/almaden/index.html
Cheers,

Charles Rettner said:

Dan:
PhotoElf is a really excellent program for printing multiple copies
and making sheets of many different pictures etc. But in addition,
it has a feature for creating web albums. You select as many pics
as you want, click a few buttons, and you have a nice web page.
The images are represented by their thumbnails in a narrow left
hand frame. One click brings up the correspondiong picture. Some of
the default settings are poor choices, but once you set it up, it
works very well. I say this as someone who has set up many, many
pages by hand, complete with custom thumbnails.
A recent example is at:
http://users2.ev1.net/~rettner/Piranhas2002/almaden/index.html
Cheers,

Click to expand...

Or use photoshop's web gallery. It will create a web page with thumbnails. You can just use the thumbnails if you don't like the web layout.

Charles Rettner said:

Dan:
PhotoElf is a really excellent program for printing multiple copies
and making sheets of many different pictures etc. But in addition,
it has a feature for creating web albums. You select as many pics
as you want, click a few buttons, and you have a nice web page.
The images are represented by their thumbnails in a narrow left
hand frame. One click brings up the correspondiong picture. Some of
the default settings are poor choices, but once you set it up, it
works very well. I say this as someone who has set up many, many
pages by hand, complete with custom thumbnails.
A recent example is at:
http://users2.ev1.net/~rettner/Piranhas2002/almaden/index.html
Cheers,

Click to expand...

Charles,

Being a swimming parent myself, I especially enjoyed your pictures. I'm wondering, though, why the thumnails on the left appear a little blurry. Your pictures are crystal clear, but the thumnails aren't. Do you know what causes that? It reminds me of the thumbnails I have seen somewhere on my own computer, but I don't remember exactly where. It might be the ones that Windows XP creates. Any ideas?
Dan

Dan Diercks said:

Charles Rettner said:

Dan:
PhotoElf is a really excellent program for printing multiple copies
and making sheets of many different pictures etc. But in addition,
it has a feature for creating web albums. You select as many pics
as you want, click a few buttons, and you have a nice web page.
The images are represented by their thumbnails in a narrow left
hand frame. One click brings up the correspondiong picture. Some of
the default settings are poor choices, but once you set it up, it
works very well. I say this as someone who has set up many, many
pages by hand, complete with custom thumbnails.
A recent example is at:
http://users2.ev1.net/~rettner/Piranhas2002/almaden/index.html
Cheers,

Click to expand...

Charles,
Being a swimming parent myself, I especially enjoyed your pictures.
I'm wondering, though, why the thumnails on the left appear a
little blurry. Your pictures are crystal clear, but the thumnails
aren't. Do you know what causes that? It reminds me of the
thumbnails I have seen somewhere on my own computer, but I don't
remember exactly where. It might be the ones that Windows XP
creates. Any ideas?
Dan

Click to expand...

Dan:

You have a good eye. I just looked into it in some detail and the answer is pretty clear from the following comparison.



The top one is the original reduced to march the thumb. Then both were enlarged to show detail. It is clear that the thumbs suffer disproportionally from jpg compression. At first I thought that they were compressed too much. But if you compress the full size and thumb the same amount, the thumb looks much worse. The point is that jpg compression destroys detail...and making it smaller makes more detail.

So the good news is that this effect is unavoidable unless you want large files. That is also the bad news.
Cheers, Charlie
PS

If you didn't see all the pics yet, the full swim site for the season is at: http://users2.ev1.net/~rettner/Piranhas2002/

All taken with my EZi, which got wet at the last meet, so is now getting repaired. See, "THE last thing my EZi saw" at: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1008&message=3069379

--
CharlieR

Microsoft Frontpage does an excellent job of creating thumbnails for web pages. You can set the size of the thumbnail then just one click and you have it along with the reference to the full-size when you click on the thumbnail.

See http://www.acebiz.com/photos/utaztrip/gcanyon/index.htm for an example. These are rather large thumbnails but the smaller ones also look really sharp and clear.

Also, there are a lot of programs that will automate creating thumbnails. You might go to http://www.tucows.com and search for image editors and image viewers and you should find several freeware programs that will do this.

Dan Diercks said:

I'm using Windows XP and I use the power tool "Resize Image"
feature on a right click all the time to make a really fast small
image to e-mail. I wish it had a setting for an even smaller image
to make a quick thumbnail for use on a web page. Does anyone know a
quick way to do this in XP? I've been going into my image editing
software and doing a resize in there, but that's way too much
trouble.

Click to expand...