Image Resizer

Here's the executable code for the Resizer described in an earlier post. It's a single MSI file that installs on your machine.

It requires the .Net 1.1 Runtimes.

You can download it here.

Changing Sharepoint Image Sizes

As we covered in an earlier post, it can be a challenge keeping Picture Libraries to a manageable size.

We've created this application to help squeeze images down to size.

Modern digital cameras create very large images, but in many cases there’s no point in having an image larger than the screen. This application reduces the size of your pictures to a specified size.

There are 3 steps once the application is loaded.

1. Set the maximum size for the converted images. The default is 800 pixels by 600 pixels
2. Select the images to convert
3. Identify the output directory for the new images

You can see the screen shot here. Note that this "thumbnail" was produced using the program!

When you click the "Convert Files" button, the source images are processed. The proportions are kept, so if an image is reduced from 1200 pixels wide to 800 pixels, then the hight is kept to the same proportions.

If the source image is smaller than the given dimensions then it is not adjusted.

This application has been tested accessing images on a Sharepoint server directly (as described here). It has not been tested saving the new images back to the server.

Don't forget that replaceing the Sharepoint Picture Library images is easy. When you go to the Library and Upload an image there’s a “multiple Items” link. Click that and you can select the modified imagesand upload.

[Note]

This is a first release of this resizer. I would suggest that you copy any images to a working directory before using this application, just in case the size of the created files are not to your liking.

This application has not been tested where the output directory is the same as the location of the input images. It would be wise not to do this.

Managing the Size of Picture Libraries

Our corporate Sharepoint site is a big hit. We’ve set it up so that each department has its own sub-web that they maintain.

This is a great win for the company because it means that department intranets become self-managing. The Information Technology team can then focus on other things and don’t become a “bottle-neck” in the delivery of intranet services.

The down-side of this is that the size of the sites can get out of hand. I was doing a review of usage of the sites and found some very large Picture Libraries. Further investigation showed that users had uploaded digital photographs onto the site. That’s great, it’s what we want them to do. But unfortunately it means that the site has become large and slow to load.

Reducing the size of each individual image would be time-consuming.
But I’ve got some ideas for a tool to process these images in bulk and reduce the size.

Keep tuned.