Fantastic Tool For Bloggers

Here and again I am impressed with a tool so slick that I feel it deserves its own blog post.  You are reading such a post about such a tool.

One of the most common challenges I come across when it comes to training new bloggers to add pictures to their articles is the whole resizing issue.  Cameras provide novices with poster-sized images that simply will not do.  In addition, most don't have a quick and easy solution to resize or crop images making them web-ready.  I usually end up spending 30 minutes downloading, installing and training clients on irfanview.  I have just come across the tool that will save us all time, training and headache.

PIXER.us is my new best friend.  An AJAX, online solution for resizing, cropping, rotating, flipping, and effect editing.  It works like a dream.  Upload a picture from your harddrive, make desired changes in real-time, save back to harddrive.  There is no software installation, no delay in editing and (apparently) no limit to the image size.  I do see two very minor drawbacks: 1. Upload time depends on size of image (bandwidth issue); 2. You need to be online to do your editing.

PIXER.us gets a 10 for usability, convenience and solution.

Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

Comments

[Sharon Simms]

Sounds like an excellent tool and one I'll try later today. Another advantage of it being online is that you don't have to load software on your office computer, your home computer and your laptop - just go online. For those of us with an AirCard, it's an easily accessible tool. Thanks for sharing it.

[Jonathan Dalton]

My webpage designer turned me onto IrfanView some time ago and it has been great for resizing photos for my blog and my website. It looks like this software has a little more complete range of functionality, though.

[Ann Cummings]

Love finding out about tools like this, especially since it sounds like such a no-brainer! Thank you so much for putting up a post about it! I'm going to go check it out now.

Thank you,
Ann Cummings

[REBloGGirl]

Very cool tool. It always amazes what people come up with. Another very cool tool online tool that comes in handy on a site is the buttonator- which lets you create high end buttons for your website on the fly. www.buttonator.com/

[Brian J. Davis, RAA]

The easiest tool that I know of, that everyone has on their Windows computer, is Microsoft Paint. Just click start / programs / accessories / and then Paint. Open the application and browse to your image. Once the image is open in Paint, use the Stretch/Skew tool (why don't they rename it Resize?) to adjust the size of your image.

[Loren Nason]

My first reaction was "What Crap, why use this when you can get the free power toy from microsoft"

My second reaction, now that i looked at the site is thats its actually pretty cool.

I still recommend to most agents though is to install the image resizer Power Toy from Microsoft.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/ImageResizerPowertoySetup.exe

But this tool has more options than the XP Power Tool so i will start showing during classes.

Loren
Future of Real Estate Technology

[JeffX]

Awesome Jim, thanks!

[Tom]

I use a program called Blogjet to do my posting in. It has an automatic resize tool in it so I have no headaches. Blogjet is relatively inexpensive and also allows blogging when you are offline to post later.