Despite its strangely "off" description on GOTD, iResizer is an interesting variation of Inpaint which can perform visual tricks that are otherwise hard to reproduce with a Photoshop-like tool. The interface is minimalistic (just a few big buttons), yet it does everything that it was designed to do, and does so surprisingly well.It's well worth looking at the tutorials on the publisher's website and then fiddling with the application: you just might find some interesting applications for it.

LIsa  –  12 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+117)

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Today's giveaway is from Teorex, a highly reputable software publisher which, like Adobe, specialises in pixel manipulation and management. Teorex doesn't pretend to compete with Adobe, so any comparison between the two is fatuous. What Teorex's software does do is provide, at a very reasonable price, opportunities for image management that will, in most cases, result in more satisfying pictures than the original: it ain't Photoshop, but then again, it ain't Photoshop prices.

iSizer is a clever pixel manipulation app that's very easy to master but nevertheless needs some careful user input: 'intelligent' though it may appear to be, no software is ever going to be as intelligent as the person using it.

I shoot thousands of images a year for business and pleasure and, like many here, have long since taken advantage of the low cost of Class 10 SDHC cards to cease to worry about image sizes. Even my small, go-anywhere, 6-year-old Panasonic Lumix DMC TZ3 shoots at maximum quality, resulting in 3072 x 2304 originals at 4:3 aspect.

That camera, like just about every other on today's market, also allows widescreen shooting, but experience has taught me that cropping a 4:3 to change it to 16:9 widescreen is infinitely better than shooting w/s in the first place. There's also the fact that it's doubtful if any photograph ever taken, anywhere, by anyone, could not be improved by judicious cropping.

iSizer, however, isn't a conventional crop tool via which entire sections of images are scissored away to change the shape. It acts 'intelligently' to re-compose the image according to the parameters defined by the user (either the app's red button, which allows the adjustable marker brush to highlight an element for discarding, or the green button, to highlight an element for protection / retention.)

I've now run iSizer on some recent out-of-camera 3072 x 2304 Panasonic Lumix DMC TZ3 originals. In the test, of a 4:3 2072 x 2304 image of a building interior, a figure was edited out using the red marker. (In this instance, it would actually have been easy to clone out the figure in Photoshop, but cloning isn't always possible.)

iSizer did indeed cut out the figure and the image area above and below, resulting in a resize from 3072 x 2304 to 2979 x 2304. It didn't throw up artefacts nor materially affect the overall image quality. Definitely a thumbs up here -- but again, as with all activity of this type, the background was critical to the editing (in this shot it was a plain, dark background; something brighter and with busy verticals or cross hatching would've posed a more serious challenge.)

Still working on that same image, now in its truncated 2979 x 2304 guise, I ran the iSizer conversion, that is, asked the app to take this by now unusually shaped photograph and turn it into widescreen.
Well, it certainly did that all right: the 2979 x 2304 image turned into 4096 x 2304. . .

Which, of course, isn't widescreen. In fact: it's so far from being a true 16:9 aspect ratio that no monitor or TV screen could hope to accommodate it other than as a letterboxed image with black bars above and below.

It was then necessary to resize in Photoshop, using a simple 1680 x 1050 crop, the effect of which was to slice off a significant portion of the iResizer image. But at least, the image has now successfully migrated from 4:3 aspect to widescreen 16:9 aspect.

This apparent failure of iSizer to 'intelligently' deal with the widescreen transformation isn't, in fact, what it seems. iSizer didn't fail but tempted with the quick-tick 16:9 option when, in fact, commonsense says that if you want a widescreen image, then you should forget iSizer's fast-fix check box and simply enter the required 1680 x 1050 in the app's resize panel.

In other words, therefore: DON'T just take any image you might have and expect iSizer to convert it to widescreen just because you've clicked that option: you'll need to spend a couple more seconds, entering in the actual dimensions (typically, 1680 x 1050.)

However: though the image re-sizing worked, iSizer's vulnerability was never more apparent -- the shot, of a building interior with high rising windows and soaring columns, 'stretched' from 4:3 to 16:9 and wound up looking like something by Salvador Dali: all the verticals were wavy, wobbly, and the windows well-nigh liquid.

(Yes, the verticals could have been excluded, but such preparation work would, literally, have taken so long as to render the exercise pointless: the 4:3 image could have been cropped to 16:9 in mere seconds.)

All that said though, this is actually quite a clever and useful app providing the user takes the trouble to learn how to deploy it to its full potential. It won't work successfully on every image -- obviously, an image with many strong verticals is going to look, well, horrendous if s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d wide -- but if there aren't that many uprights in view, then the marker pen will certainly protect selected pixels from distortion during manipulation.

As to ease of use, it's an absolute doddle (oh, re the comment in the suggestion boxs above: you don't *need* a 'close image' button with this software; when you've finished working on one image, simply open another -- the app closes the image it's been working on.)

Thanks, then, Teorex, and also, GAOTD: today's software really is a good 'un, and recommended to everyone with an interest in image processing. It won't work miracles, and shouldn't be expected to, but if used thoughtfully and carefully, it genuinely can deliver improvements. Definitely, a 4* rating.

MikeR  –  12 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+83)

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Downloaded this software expecting a photo re-sizer. I was wondering did it just down-size photos. I wanted a reasonable price up-sizer to turn pics into posters (any suggestions welcome).
I was surprised to find this did neither (at least not very well),but it is a GEM in the fact it does something that other software fails to do (easily). It can literally bring people together (but only in pics).
This trick of moving people or objects closer will be great to use, particularly outdoors when you have a situation where the object (person) is too far away from the landmark. You can also remove unwanted objects from in between the subjects (the ex perhaps).

Pity it isn't part of a full image enhancing/manipulating package even as a plugin. I would also suggest a before/after screen and a scalable results preview.

DenisX  –  12 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+74)

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Very nice and easy to use tool today which does what it claims without any hassle.

What makes this tool special is that, unlike other similar apps, it doesn't affect all pixels of an image, when resizing and scaling it, since it manages to resize mostly affects pixels in areas where visual content is not important.

And it's even able to let users choose which features of the image should be discarded or which part of the photo users want to retain at the expense of others.

Highly recommended!!

That being said, you can do more or less the same task as this GAOTD for FREE using the Scale Image Tool of the Open Source GIMP:

http://www.squidoo.com/gimp-resize-pictures

Alternatively, you can also use for this the freeware GIMPHOTO, a cool free PHOTOSHOP alternative for editing photos and images based on GIMP:

http://www.gimphoto.com/

Portable version (because PORTABLE is better....):
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Editors/Portable-Gimphoto.shtml

Screenshots:
http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/Portable-Gimphoto-Screenshot-210135.html

Full Tutorial:
http://www.petegill.net/iteachit/gimphoto/index.htm

How to resize images using GIMPHOTO:
http://www.petegill.net/iteachit/gimphoto/06_resizing.htm

XP users may find handy trying this free tool too:

http://www.exmont.com/imazer.html

Enjoy!!

Giovanni  –  12 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+63)

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I wasn't able to get this last time it was offerred so was pleased to see it again. Downloaded and registered easily. I've dabbled with this for about half an hour and overall I'm impressed. I really like the ability to get the 16:9 aspect conversion. I do quite a lot of powerpoint in this aspect and I often end up distorting something to get it to fit. This does an excelent job. The tutorial on the website does this with an object on a plain background and I suspected it might struggle with something complicated so I gave it a toughie. A picture of my wife and grandson in front of a complex stone house wall and part of a window with hanging blinds. It expanded this virtually flawlessly. I managed to crash it once by trying to take out 2 largish chunks and keep a third. It stuck on 99%. However I had chosen a custom size. It might have managed on its own choice but I didn't go back to check. It doesn't cope with a diagonal feature running in the background behind something to be removed- though I don't think that's something to really expect it to do. A bit of work with sister Inpaint will remove the worst of the error though. Overall- really good and a definite keeper.

Revcoling  –  12 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+58)

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