PC help: Fit to frame

Q I read with interest your articles on digital photo frames and so I went out and bought one, with another on the way. Is there any free software that I can download to resize my pictures so they fit the frame better?
Clive T

A The one thing to know before you start resizing your images is the resolution of the screen on your digital picture frame. This should be in the manual, on the box or on the manufacturer’s website, and it’s likely to be 640 x 480, 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 pixels, although it could be slightly higher or lower than these.

When you know the resolution, you can start to make sure all your pictures fit this. Assuming you’re using Windows XP, there’s a free download available from Microsoft called the Image Resizer that will do just this.

Download and install it and follow any instructions that appear (note that you might not see anything on screen to confirm that it has installed).

Once installed, you’ll find a new Resize Pictures entry in the menu when you right-click a picture file. Click this to bring up a dialogue box from which you can select a new picture size – usefully, there are presets for the three sizes above.

Click OK and Windows will resize the file. To do this for more than one file at once, select them all and right-click one, then follow the same procedure. If all your pictures are in the same folder, open it, then click the Edit menu and click Select All to choose the whole lot.

The files will be renamed with the word Small, Medium or Large in brackets after the name. You can then copy all the new files for use on the photo frame, and usefully your original files will be retained, so you’ll still have high-quality copies for printing.

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