ictsan

Thanks to I King for this contribution;

Batch resizing of photos can be done with:
Picasa (free from Google)

Microsoft image resizer – free from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

picturetray – free from here:
http://www.picturetray.com/

or pixresizer – free from here:
http://pixresizer.en.softonic.com/

I just blogged about the need to resize digital photos.

Here are some more solutions I’ve found for this tricky problem. These are tools that you are likely to be able to access in schools.

1) Use Microsoft Picture Manager. There is a detailed worked example here from the educationict website.

2) If you are using an RM network and have Colour Magic available, this can be used. There is an excellent help-sheet, again on the educationict site; here

3) Find an on-line web resizing service. Webresizer http://webresizer.com/, seems to be very useful. It has an easy to use cropping tool, and you can change contrast, ‘exposure’ and colour saturation, although these effects  are a bit tricky to use as you have to enter values rather than drag sliders.

Here’s a photo that I cropped, brightened and reduced its size. It of my favourite camera for work in schools; the Mavica FD 200 with memory stick. Still going strong! The picture is 93% smaller than the original, so webresizer tells me. It has also made a good job of the play people, though the upload time of this large file was longer than I expected.

I am still open to any other ideas! Please add a comment.

Folk who have worked in the additional needs field for a while, and are using digital photography, probably started using a Sony Mavica camera. Excellent cameras. The picture quality is still excellent. If you are lucky enough to have a model which can switch between floppy disc and memory stick (FD/MS) then you have a camera that has years of useful snapping ahead of it.

You’ll need to buy a Memory Stick like the one you’ll see here. It has to be MagicGate stick. I think these cameras take any size between 16 and 128 Mb Sticks. These are available still, but you are most likely to find one on ebay.

Even the older floppy disc models are worth hanging on to. Even if your new computers have no floppy drive, you can use a USB floppy drive. However, floppy disc drives will eventually fail – as will every other form of electronic storage device.

These cameras are still very good. They also have the Coomber factor. They are rugged but just too uncool to be stolen for personal use. It is actually easier to teach a young pupil to use one of these cameras than many of the smaller cameras schools buy these days.