How in the #%$^ do I re-size photos on my Mac?

[speeder]

One of the few things that I absolutely hate about my Apple computer is iPhoto. Maybe my copy does not work right, but I cannot do a simple re-size of pictures that I just loaded-in from camera. I have a new camera and w/o knowing it was set on super-high res so the files are HUGE and cannot be posted here, for instance.

When I select a pic, hit the "edit" tab, a little menu called "constrain" comes up that appears to allow you to re-size. The only problem is that when I change the res #s and then hit "done", nothing changes. The photo still displays the same stats as before in the little info window to the left. I've tried it several times, unless the new version goes somewhere else(?), I'm at a loss.

When I had a PC back in the day, one of my favorite things about it was the easy, intuitive photo editing software that I downloaded for free online for it. I could edit photos any way I wanted very easily and also keep the original version, etc... No special skills needed. I hate iPhoto. I'm sure that it does amazing things if you take the class at the Apple store and learn how to use the POS, but I always thought that the point of good consumer-grade boxes was the interface and ease of navigation, figuring things out yourself, etc. To be fair, most apps for Macs are nice and reasonably easy. I've just never figured out iPhoto and never liked it for the most part. Now I need it to do the absolute simplest thing that a photo software program can be asked to do, and I cannot even find in the help menus or contents lists how to do it. Pulling hair out and feeling stupid, just the way a computer should make you feel.

TIA for the cure.

[JavaBrewer]

iHave similar problems with the iLife apps having recently moved the family to a Mac. Nothing is all that *intuitive* and iPhoto makes simple things, like resizing a picture(s), a chore. The way I know is to select the target pictures and choose the File->Export tool. From there it will let you choose the quality (size) and then push them to a folder in your home directory, sites folder I think...

I haven't tried iMovie/iDVD yet but am expecting a similar *intuitive* experience.

XP Image re-sizer is the bomb. Right click done.

[Mule]

Tee hee hee!

[island911]

It's a Mac... so it Must be intuitive

[gassy]

[nostatic]

I use photoshop ($) or graphic converter (shareware) or aperture (my main photo app). iPhoto works fine but if you're resizing iirc you use export because iPhoto assumes you want to make a copy for some other use. There are preset sizes or you can specify.

ThE newest version of iMovie is terrible - they totally screwed it up. I left iPhoto because I have a huge library and wanted to have more control in post. Not everything apple does is spot on. It iPhoto used to be fairly well behaved when I used it.

You can also use quicktime to resize.

[gassy]

Denis,
Select a pic and then go under FILE to EXPORT. There you can pick what extension you want, and then after that you can pick basic sizes or a custom size. Better to have the setting on your camera high so you can get a better quality print if need be.

[nostatic]

it also might be in a menu called "share". They started using that nomenclature some time back.

[jrdavid68]

Get a PC

[Ronbo]

iPhoto is really more of a catalog for your photos than a photo editor. It has some basic edit functions, including a very basic resize function, but it's not meant to replace a full-featured editor. As Todd mentioned, Photoshop or Graphic Converter are both excellent and give complete control over the resize function.

[stomachmonkey]

There is a program on the Mac called Preview. Use it, that's what it's there for.

Will open just about any graphics file format and let you resize, change filetype, tif to png to jpeg to eps to pdf etc...

[87coupe]

I find it funny how people who don't understand something will bash it. Anyways, here is a couple ways to resize photos using built-in tools on OS X.

1. Automator / Preview
   http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/access-extra-preview-features-through-automator.html
   Basically open Automator and select 'Finder' in the Library column, then drag 'Get Selected Finder Items' from the Action column to the Workflow area. Next select Preview in the Library column, and drag ‘Scale Images’ from the Action column to the Workflow area. Test it out by hitting the Run button & if your happy with the results save the Workflow for future use. *Tip*: Save your Workflow as a Finder plugin and you will have the ability to right-click an image in the Finder and resize on the fly.
   
2. Create a icon for drag and drop resizing
   This is my preferred method when all I want to do is resize an image and don't need / want to do any other manipulation. I have several of these for different image sizes created. The nice part is you don't have to open an app, just highlight all the photos you want to resize and drag them onto the icon.
   
   Open Script Editor and paste this code in
   

   on open some_items
   	repeat with this_item in some_items
   		try
   			rescale_and_save(this_item)
   		end try
   	end repeat
   end open
   
   
   to rescale_and_save(this_item)
   	tell application "Image Events"
   		launch
   		set the target_width to 1280
   		-- open the image file
   		set this_image to open this_item
   		
   		set typ to this_image's file type
   		
   		copy dimensions of this_image to {current_width, current_height}
   		if current_width is greater than current_height then
   			scale this_image to size target_width
   		else
   			-- figure out new height
   			-- y2 = (y1 * x2) / x1
   			set the new_height to (current_height * target_width) / current_width
   			scale this_image to size new_height
   		end if
   		
   		tell application "Finder" to set new_item to ¬
   			(container of this_item as string) & "scaled." & (name of this_item)
   		save this_image in new_item as typ
   		
   	end tell
   end rescale_and_save

   Save as -> select File format "application"
   
   Now when you drag a image on this icon it will resize the width of the image to 1280 and maintain original proportions. The file will be named scaled.inputfilename. You can make one for a different size by changing "1280" to something else.
   
3. iPhoto
   Use the export image option as described by previous posts.

Cheers,

[Mule]

On my (Vista) PC I can resize without pasting any code. Macs are so easy!

[nostatic]

Macs are very easy. No code is necessary - that is a propeller-head solution. Export or Share will work in iPhoto. And actually Quicktime will do an amazing number of things...just most people don't realize it.

That being said, it depends on the version of iPhoto. Personally, iLife '08 has issues. I don't like what they did with iPhoto or iMovie - they dumbed it down too far. Part of the issue is that they wanted to differentiate further between the pro apps and the iapps. But they erred on the side of simple imho. I vastly prefer the previous version of iMovie and iPhoto.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

You probably don't have ImageReady. if you do, just select all the photos you want converted, right click and select the appropriate shortcut.

I use Make JPEG (quality 10).exe a lot

If I have a lot of pics to post in Classifieds, it's quicker to do this than Pelican converting 1.5MB files on upload.

[Aurel]

Originally Posted by nostatic

Macs are very easy. No code is necessary - that is a propeller-head solution. .

Like that?

[speeder]

Originally Posted by nostatic

Macs are very easy. No code is necessary - that is a propeller-head solution. Export or Share will work in iPhoto. And actually Quicktime will do an amazing number of things...just most people don't realize it.

That being said, it depends on the version of iPhoto. Personally, iLife '08 has issues. I don't like what they did with iPhoto or iMovie - they dumbed it down too far. Part of the issue is that they wanted to differentiate further between the pro apps and the iapps. But they erred on the side of simple imho. I vastly prefer the previous version of iMovie and iPhoto.

Thanks, Todd. Used Export/Share, easy as fishin'. It jsut irritates me that it wasn't more obvious for a computer illiterate like me, and that the (supposed) tool in iPhoto doesn't work/do anything. All taken care of.

87coupe: What in the world are you talking about?? Your solution is incredibly complicated and unnecessary.

[87coupe]

Uhh, I provided 3 different solutions the last of which was iPhoto export. Sorry for trying to help. Note to self, never try to help the fossils on Pelican with anything technical.

[nostatic]

dude, a guy posts a very basic question/problem about a consumer app and you give him script code?

You run an IT department, don't you?

[Porsche]

As mentioned, open photo is Preview (built into OSX) and resize in there - easy.