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Imagesizer is a great AIR application for batch resizing, optimising and renaming of your images. Built by two UK developers Mark Starling and James Ford.

James describes why he built Imagesizer:

I created ImageSizer to batch process my digital camera photos so I could quickly send them to friends/relatives or upload them to Facebook and Flickr without hogging all of my bandwidth!

They guys have been regularly updating this AIR application adding new features and squashing any bugs, it’s still in beta but fully useable.

Simply drag you images onto the application and ImageSizer will import them ready to be renamed, cropped or just exported using different constraints or image quality.

When your images have been processed you get to choose either a ZIP archive that you can drag to your desktop or a standard folder containing all the images. You can see the future intentions of the developers by seeing the greyed out options for Twitpic and Flickr export.

The application settings window has some rich options and some fun facts like giving you an idea of memory usage and the option to have window effects applied using Adobe’s pixel bender technology. It’s clear that this is an application for the developers to test out ideas and concepts while also being a useable and viable application in it’s own right.

Video Review

ImageSizer AIR Application from RefreshingApps on Vimeo.

RefreshingApps.com reviews ImageSizer Adobe AIR application

Design eye

Application looks nice and has been skinned using the Adobe Creative Suite Fireworks application. I’m not that sold on the green but it’s still done to a high standard.

From a usability perspective the star action points guide the user through the simple steps to compressing their first images. It’s a simple application for the user and using this communication metaphor it needs little introducing or instruction, nice.

One minor point was that sometimes it’s difficult to see where the buttons for actions are located as without rollover they look the same as the standard text. An example is the ‘crop’ and ‘remove image’ buttons – easily learned but possibly make them all look and act the same.

When you reach step 5 you are presented with the folder options. The text does say to drag them onto you desktop but when I first used the app I didn’t read that bit eager to get my images and I just clicked the folders expecting something to happen. Maybe addressing the iconography to include a drag symbol and arrow or something to visually guide the user on the next step?

These very minor points aside it’s a nice looking and simple to use application.

Technical eye

Built using Adobe Flex, Adobe Fireworks and the Adobe AIR SDK.

In Summary

It would be nice in the future to be able to rename all of the images in bulk for example I want to prefix all of my images with ‘ItalyHoliday’ followed by the image number. Crop didn’t work on the version I tested so hopefully this is a minor issue and ImageSizer gets an update soon.

Previewing of the image quality settings you intent to use could be a nice compliment so that you can test the results before committing to the batch process of all images.

If you need to compress images in bulk and fancy giving this a spin you will not be disappointed. The hard work of the developers has shone through here and by the sounds of the future plans for this application there is more to come.