January 9, 2009

discovery & bated breath

my hard drive is whirring, my laptop becoming almost uncomfortably warm on my legs as i lie on the couch, tip-tapping this little keyboard. i may be overtaxing my poor overloaded little faithful friend, but maybe, just maybe, lappy will come through.

happy thought.

the background: i take a lot of pictures. a lot. an amateur (very) photographer, i always have my little point'n'shoot with me (my film slr too cumbersome & valuable to lug everywhere), and my 3 gigs of memory card fill up awfully quick. thusly, my hard drive has become overburdened. fear of complete and utter failure prompted me to spend most of last evening cleaning out my hard drive and creating a backup on my external drive.

tonight, however, finds me facing the daunting task of editing & compressing my thousands of photos. as self-designated photographer of most group outings, facebook friends, family, and flickr all beg to take a look-see. without any proper photo software, i have been limping my way, photo by tedious photo, through compression, rotation and resaving (sweating bullets that i don't overwrite my originals) using a basic photoviewing software that came factory-installed almost half a decade ago (!) on my little lappy. will i (and my hard drive) survive?

those of you more experienced photographers and digital veterans are probably laughing at my pathetic attempts. but, i'm still learning, and that's what matters, right? right? ok, ok, you can keep laughing.

i discovered a free resizer software program a few months ago, and forgot to figure it out. what took me so long? i could kick myself for not trying it before tonight. not only will it resize photos in batches, but allow me to overlay, crop, rotate, etc all with a few clicks of the mouse.

i decided it to test it tonight with a folder of photos from my trip to Forks/La Push last month (never fear, dear bloggy friends--post to follow--with pics, i hope!)

drumroll, please! i just resized 200 photos to 50% in a matter of 5 minutes. can i hear a 'hallelujah'?

i have never been so happy to see a windows status popup!

6 comments:

Thor Sandgren said...

Haven't you found similar functionality in PhotoShop (modest $) or Picasa 3 (free)?

James and Katrina said...

Thanks for your Christmas card. We enjoy your blog. Looks like your holidays were wonderful. We hope your new year is full of fun and happiness!

gail said...

Horrible Timing: Just as I purchased my first DSLR, and an 8G memory card to accomodate the hobby, my hard drive all but crashes because it's completely full.

Perfect Timing: Your blog post. Just the answer I was looking for! Thanks!

gail said...

Shoot...I spoke too soon. Are you aware of a Mac version? This would seem to run only on Windows...?

skiscott said...

not bad for a FREE pice of software, no? you're welcome for the tip. I got your back!

erita said...

@Thor--do you have a cheaper version of PhotoShop that i'm not aware of? all the versions i see are over $500, which is not modest enough for me :)

i haven't tried Picasa 3--i didn't like their web album that Blogger uses, so i didn't even think to explore their software. maybe i'll give it a whirl.

@Katrina--thank you! looks like your little family is doing great too!

@fourthiryam--alas, i am only a windows user, and don't have any ideas for a mac. i read your plight on your blog--perhaps an external hard drive is in order to back things up? i'm actually toying with the idea of moving all my photos off my laptop onto my external hard drive permanently to free up memory. . .

@skiscott--as usual, your tips come through! k.k. has many great tips--keep feeding them to me

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