App and game reviews by Mobilism's Android Reviews team
Feb 23rd, 2017, 6:38 pm
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App: Photo & Picture Resizer v1.0.167
Developer: Farluner Apps
Category: Photography
Price: N/A
IAP: $4.79 - $7.49 per item

Photo & Picture Resizer is a convenient and relatively simple utility that crops and rescales images and photos to better suit daily tasks, and to aid in file management. With today's cameras and phones sporting higher resolution output every year it seems, this leaves consumers with the daunting chore of mass file management that is becoming more difficult to deal with in several aspects. Those with external SD card storage are definitely in better shape than those who rely solely on the fixed internal memory of their devices; though, users in both instances are equally faced with the same inherent problems. Since Photo & Picture Resizer, or Resizer for short, is not a complex or horrendously complicated application requiring a massive review and report, this is also the beauty of the nature of this streamlined tool. There are only really two functions this app performs to discuss in any particular detail, but these two facets effectively solve problems that we face in every day modern life. As I have personally endured countless experiences with numerous graphics apps that do not offer any way to simply change resolution of images, there is a popular demand for this basic function. Even some of the higher-end image editing apps from the largest names in the business do not offer this functionality, and that's where Resizer fills this void to save the day.


Memories Can Kill Your Memory

Standard practice for most shutterbugs is to crank up the resolution on their phone cameras to obtain the highest quality images possible. Not many people take photos of their precious moments in life at 640x480 resolution just to save storage space, or at least I hope not! Modern phones are producing images at 2560x1920 or higher by default these days, and even screenshots on large tablets are in the same ballpark. Images in this range of resolution can weigh in around 5 to 6 megabytes per instance, eating away at your memory with each shot. Quite a few people actually store their photos on their devices, not even realizing how much space they actually use. If one simply reduced these 2560x1920 images to half resolution, say to 1280x960, it would use 50% less space or more, and still be perfectly presentable to friends and family with plenty of detail. Using Resizer to reduce images to half resolution would allow you to safely store the original photos on your PC or external drives, while retaining the smaller sized copies on your device to share with others. One could always use cloud storage to download HD images to impress your friends, but could gobble up valuable data allowance while off a WiFi connection. The lucky ones with SD cards will soon find themselves in the same dilemma quickly enough; memories will kill your memory over time, and you'll have to deal with it at some point. Simply halving the resolution using Resizer will effectively free up space needed for all those crazy pictures that you simply must have with you at all times.


Socially Acceptable Photos

So, you just caught this huge trout at the lake and can't wait to get home to gloat to your friends and followers. In glorious haste, you decide to send up four HD selfies to Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook while in the mountains with one bar of reception. A mere 28 minutes or longer, you just spammed the Internet with 16 poster-sized murals that resemble the Jaws movie poster, and wrecked your data allowance for the week. It would be much more sensible to run those four images through Resizer first to arrive at more suitable file sizes and resolutions, and also save you time to catch more fish. See where I'm going with this? If you post images to forums with resolution limitations, Resizer will shrink those images to any exact resolution you need, saving you a hassle of using an online service or risk getting a warning from a moderator. When others view your images, the impact is always much greater when they can see the entire image all at once, not having to scroll around to look at parts of it. The social media trends are here to stay and aren't going anywhere soon, so it's important to have a way to quickly and properly upload images without irritating people in the process. Using Resizer to rescale those HD images to 800x600 or 1024x768 will save you time, save your data, make you look like a posting pro and boost the effectiveness of your media.


Lights! Camera! Reduction!

Opening Resizer initially presents a very simple home menu with options to take a picture, resize images and view already resized images. There is also an alternate selection method available by hitting the hamburger menu to use your favorite file managers to select images for rescaling. Once images are located in a folder, you can select a single image or long press one for batch processing that will resize all images at once. With images selected, hitting the resize button will then bring up a handy menu with options for quick resizing with standard defaults, custom percentage ratio or custom resolution. With images at 2560x1920, simply entering 50% or 75% will do wonders in creating reduced resolution with great quality. I tested a folder of 62 images at approximately 1280x960 at 50% reduction with older devices that only took about 10 seconds to complete the entire batch. The rescaled images are then saved in their own folder of Pictures/PhotoResizer by default to avoid overwriting your original images, though there is an option to overwrite them if you desire. Once processed, the originals can then be stored externally at your leisure, and the resized versions can reside on the device long enough to share to the world.

The developer mentions that images can be resized multiple times without loss of quality, so I immediately had to test this claim with a sample image at 1440x1280 resolution, then halving it once at 720x640, then halving that result once more to arrive at an image of 180x160. As I normally use Photoshop on the PC for these tasks, the results with Resizer were quite satisfactory and more than acceptable to send to social media, or whatever means necessary. However, please don't take my word for it, here are the results of my test:


Since the sunset offers gradients of color, it was a good test to look out for unwanted banding effects that commonly occur during image manipulation functions such as this. The results definitely passed well enough to where I would not be embarrassed to show these to anyone in whatever situations they were presented. For single image processing, a preview window is presented afterwards to give you a comparison of the before and after effects of the image, which is a nice touch. This takes the guesswork out of the final results as you can see with your eyes how it turned out. Also, and very conveniently, Resizer will append the reduced resolution to the filename to clearly label which files are which to avoid any confusion later on, and to also aid in keeping your originals safe. For a simple process that can take mere seconds to complete, Resizer can save you uploading time, storage space and present a much more aesthetic product for presentation.


Cream Of The Crop

The other star of the show in Resizer is the crop function that operates only on single image selections, not in batch file operations. This really is best in most cases since this type of function highly depends on the subject and how it's framed. Unless the camera is completely stationary during a sequence series of shots, a batch function for crop really isn't all that useful or constructive. Selecting a single image will present both the resize and crop buttons on the top menu, along with a share button in case you wish to share the original through whatever means your device supports. The crop function offers two methods; a manual selection and a type-in transform in width and height. The manual option presents a typical pinch-style marquee box that can be dragged around the image to select where the crop is to cut the image. The type-in transform method will crop the image according to the resolution entered in the box, but I believe the manual method to be the easiest as tweaking always provides the best results. As other resized images, your cropped images will also be saved to the Pictures/PhotoResizer folder to avoid any conflicts with the originals. Just about every other image editor for Android offers a crop function, and it isn't a revolutionary thing whatsoever, but it's very convenient that Resizer offers this feature to get the best results in conjunction with the rescaling method.


Ready! Set! Post!

In just about every screen of Resizer there is a share button in the top right corner to allow you to send your images off to social networking, or whatever your devices support. No need to fire up Twitter or Snapchat after you resize your images; it's all available right there when you are done. You can even send them to image editing apps first to ramp up color, contrast or whatever tweaks you wish before processing with Resizer. Another notable feature is that you can select multiple images to send them in batches to share, even off your device. This is offered before and after processing, so you aren't limited to the post-processing stage to send them off. This could also be handy for backing up your files first, as well as copying processed images to other devices through Bluetooth. Many users have mentioned they rescale quite a few images with Resizer, then send them off with the sharing option to email in batches automatically. With a 5 or 10 megabyte limit on sending files through email, one can certainly send a lot more at once using Resizer than without. Two HD images without processing can easily take 10 megabyte alone, so this app can really be convenient for those who love to share in this fashion. The sky is the limit once the file size comes down to Earth, then you are allowed to get more done and maximize your time. Remember; more time equals more fish, right?


The Bottom Dollar

Another interesting consideration is using Resizer with Cram, which I reviewed back in 2015, and is still an amazing application to save even more storage space. After rescaling images through Resizer, you can then use Cram to reduce the file size even more dramatically through its amazing compression algorithm. File sizes will then be next to nothing upon using both, and even more easy to share and store during your daily routine. However, it's now time to reveal the sticker shock of Resizer, which leads to one of the negative points of the review. Resizer is a free download with the usual ads and locked IAP features. Though, in this case, the only feature to unlock is the preservation of EXIF data through processing, and is the only option available in the settings window. I would also like to see some compression options included here to fine tune how JPG files are saved, but that's just me. To unlock the EXIF setting, and to get rid of ads completely, will run you a subscription rate of $4.79 per year or $7.49 for a permanent unlock. As the Google Play page still states $0.99 for the minimum IAP cost, I'd have to assume they switched to the subscription model at some point to boost revenue and forgot to change it. I'm not crazy about subscriptions, but this app really does solve a lot of problems and is very convenient when you need it. For those photo buffs who frequently take lots of pictures and share everything they shoot, this cost is probably very worthwhile to support the developer and future features. One million users have downloaded Resizer, and it retains a 4.5 star rating on Google Play, which is not an easy thing to do, folks. If you choose to dive in with the subscription, or tolerate small ads and lose the EXIF data, Photo & Picture Resizer is an effortless and smart decision to make your life easier.

Pros:
  • Resize and crop your images quickly.
  • Supports fast batch file processing.
  • Very high quality rescaling algorithm.
  • Post-processing image comparing feature.
  • Full sharing to whatever your device supports.

Cons:
  • More options in settings would be nice.
  • No ability to control JPG compression ratio.
  • Expensive subscription rates for very little gain.

Image Image

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Reviewer rating: Image
Device/OS used: Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Note 3, Nexus 7 2012 & 2013, Nexus 10 / KitKat v4.4.2, KitKat v4.4.4, Lollipop v5.1.1

Purchase at Google Play
Purchase at Amazon
Mobilism: Photo & Picture Resizer Premium v1.0.167 Final


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Feb 23rd, 2017, 6:38 pm
Feb 23rd, 2017, 9:17 pm
Nice review, Shardz :D
And I definitely can see some use for it in our contests too... I know several users who'd love it.
I'll be checking this one out soon!
Feb 23rd, 2017, 9:17 pm
Feb 23rd, 2017, 11:48 pm
raindrops wrote:Nice review, Shardz :D
And I definitely can see some use for it in our contests too... I know several users who'd love it.
I'll be checking this one out soon!

Hey, raindrops! Yes, it's definitely good for contests here and preparing media so that folks don't get in trouble, though they will still require a hosting service to post them. I use it occasionally for screenshots since Mobilism Images is capped at 2550 width or height (as well as a 1 meg limit) and won't accept poster-sized images. Resizer is just a handy little tool to make the world go around...preferably in the proper direction. Thanks for the comment and the visit!
Feb 23rd, 2017, 11:48 pm
Aug 31st, 2019, 3:17 am
Quick lets catch and keep this one- at 14 - what a future. Hes got 40 years at least until he becomes as senile as me. Who was talking about youth and stamps.
Good on ya Jonathan.
Aug 31st, 2019, 3:17 am
Sep 2nd, 2019, 7:24 pm
Hi to All,

I want to present the updated version of the Photo Resizer utility which was compiled with a recent MiniGUI beta build.
It have a sfx archive as a setup now
Sep 2nd, 2019, 7:24 pm
Oct 7th, 2019, 5:50 pm
I want to present you this small utility

What is Photo Resizer ?

A FREE utility developed for digital camera owners, webmasters, people travelling
or anybody who quickly wants to resize a photo or picture for email or publishing
on a web site. No need to open a photo editor or email-client. Open the photo in
PhotoResizer, resize it and e-mail it to a friend, family, colleague or your office.

Remarks

You can load only JPEG photos with width and height more than 320 x 240 pixels.

Keyboard and mouse Control

Left button double click- switch to photo mode from file list
Left button click- switch to Fullscreen mode from windows mode
Right button click- back to windows mode from Fullscreen mode
Esc, Enter- exit from Fullscreen mode
Gray Plus- rotate right the image
Gray Minus- rotate left the image
Left- load previous image in the file list
Right- load next image in the file list
Up, Home- load one image in the file list
Down, End- load last image in the file list
Page Up, Back- load previous image in the file list
Page Down, Space- load next image in the file list

Used tools

Made by Harbour and MiniGUI with freeware FreeImage.dll.

Enjoy
Oct 7th, 2019, 5:50 pm
Oct 18th, 2019, 1:34 pm
I can not seem to get my picture adjusted for my LG TV. While viewing video clip via video devil the picture is too large for the screen.

Any help is appericated
Oct 18th, 2019, 1:34 pm
Jun 29th, 2023, 5:03 pm
thebleedingedge wrote:
Donnanix wrote:I can not seem to get my picture adjusted for my LG TV. While viewing video clip via video devil the picture is too large for the screen.

Any help is appericated
I suggest ImagePipe (removes exif data and modifies images to reduce size before sharing.) - https://f-droid.org/packages/de.kaffeemitkoffein.imagepipe
This app can also resize/edit images!
I still suggest imagepipe for a lot - especially compression - but for resizing i now suggest LLCrop - way better/finer controlls: https://github.com/k3b/LosslessJpgCrop
Jun 29th, 2023, 5:03 pm