Irfanview Questions ...

Hope you all are not tired of me just yet I have been using the Irfanview program suggested to me, but I have a couple of questions...Can you please let me know if I am doing this correctly before I mess up any more pictures
1. I transfer the original photos from my camera to C:\Documents\Camera Photos.
2. I open up Irfanview and change all the photos to tif format (using "save as" so I still have the original) and then save those photos in C:\Documents\Resized Photos.
3. I open up the saved tif photos and resize them to 800 x 600 so that the whole photo is visible on the desktop and then do whatever editing I want (crop, etc.). Once I am happy with the photo I then "save as" in jpeg format in C:\Documents\Edited Photos. (Couple of questions here - when I try to save some of the photos 800 x 600 they are still too large for the desktop so instead of saving 800 x 600 I chose "best to fit desktop ", but at the side of the picture is a "black" area - will that be there if I try to print them? And, when I am using "save as" to change the format of the picture to tif, on the right hand side is a box that says "TIF save options" and "save compression" - I have "none" marked and there is a check by "save palette for grayscale images - default: ON - do I want to change any settings in this box or is it best to leave it as it is?)
4. I delete all the tif format photos from C:\Documents\Resized Photos.

Am I making things harder than they have to be - or am I doing this the right way? If I do it this way am I losing any quality in the edited jpeg photo?

Thanks for your input

 

Hi,
I don't use Irfanview, but I think that in Step 3, when you open the saved TIF's, the first thing that you should do is duplicate them, and resave as TIF's,
You can then work on the duplicates as much as you like, and you will still have the originals. I don't understand why you resize them to 800 x 600 for working on the desktop! Can't you fit them to the desktop without re-sizing them?
Most image viewing programs have something like "View > Full Screen ", or hit F11 for full screen.

Roger

 

Kimberlee,
What format do you get from the camera? Mine come out as .jpg, and I copy them using Windows Explorer then resize in Irfanview.

Since Irfanview reads your camera's format, why not save a step and resize the copies directly to .jpg? Skip the step to TIF, because every step is likely to lose some quality. (I'm not sure about making TIFs from something else.)

I think you might be getting black edges because "fit to desktop" doesn't maintain aspect ratio (length to width ratio). Use the % reduction option, or check the "preserve aspect ratio" box. There are two places you can resize pictures - Image menu-resize for one at a time, or File menu-batch conversion to do a bunch at once. They have somewhat different options.

If you get resized pictures bigger than you want, delete them and resize again to something smaller. Just play around and find how much reduction you need, and how to get there in the minimum number of steps. There's really no right or wrong way.

 

I know that I made a big deal out of .jpg files being lossy by design. But I was running thru the various Irfanview options from V-3.91 and found an option I hadn't seen before.

 

Kimberlee You are probably making extra work for yourself.

1) Download you photos to C:\Documents\Camera

2) Copy and Paste all those downloaded photos to a new folder: C:\Documents\Resized

You will now be working with copies.

3) Personally, I just work with the original size of the photo. If necessary, I just use the +/- to make it smaller to fit the screen and drag the edges of Irfanview to give me room.

4) After you do whatever, SAVE AS: use a common letter before the file name..ie. if original was 001.jpg. Save as A001.jpg. All your processed photos will be grouped together, separate from the working duplicate.

5) When you go to print, you will be given all kinds of sizing options. You can even have it print a specific size.

 

Hi Kimberlee...

I also use the free JPEG Resizer to resize my jpg's.

Quote from page...

You can also try the Pegasus Online JPEG Wizard...basically it's a web page that allows you to resize your JPEG's.

Newt...it even has your "lossless "...

 

A basic note I would add is that each time you change an image, you lose information. Each change of format and resize will lose information. The difference between good and bad conversion software is the amount of information lost. The loss of information will result in reduction of image quality.

In my experience the closer the "original" image to the "final" image the better. Therefore, if you want a small image (for example a small figure in a report), you get the best results if you use your camera settings to create a small "original ". If you can set your camera to generate 800x600 image originals, you'll get better results than if you resize a larger original.

The exceptions to this is if you can get raw Tiff originals, or you have a camera with poor internal software that produces smaller "originals" via a poor quality JPEG compression utility.

The second point is to make sure you keep your originals safe and work on copies to get the transformation you want. Once you know what the "final" image needs to be, identify the fewest steps (or transfomations) you need to make to the original and then do those transformation steps on a copy of the original.

For example, you resize to 800X600 and find you need to widen the image to 800x700 so you carry out that transformation. This is much closer but still not right, so you resize to 820x690. This is now the right size, but because it has taken 3 transforms to get to this point, the image quality isn't as good as it could be. You then need to go back to the original and do a single transform from the original size to 820x690. The image quality of this file should be better than that of the 3 step image.

 

Hi Kimberlee...

Just found this in a newsletter that I get...Online Digital Image Resizer. It does not have all the features as the Pegasus link I posted above in post #6 but I have used it and seems to work quite well.

Note...it only resizes *.gifs and *.jpgs

 

Thanks everyone - I really appreciate all your help

With everyones help I have pretty much figured everything out....except this one little thing

When I am in Irfanview and I am resaving a jpeg as a tif, a box opens up saying "TIFF Save Options" It has automatically checked (for save compression) "none ". And then at the bottom of the box there is a square (that has a check mark in it) that says "save palette for grayscale images (default: ON) - Should I leave these 2 options as they are or should I be changing them (not sure what the other options mean - or even these for that matter ).