ResizeImage For Quick Online Image Cropping And Resizing
by Michael Arrington on January 6, 2009

ResizeImage is the simplest and most usable tool I’ve seen to handle quick image resizing and cropping. It’s not as useful as Skitch, which a downloadable application for Macs only, but it works in a pinch.

Next Post
Previous Post
Advertisement
  • Actively Discussed Posts

Comments rss icon

  • Anže Ž. - January 6th, 2009 at 5:35 pm PST

    I miss ajax in this application because it could be smoother since it takes time to reload a page (why do they need to reload a page when I click “crop”?). It’s so not 2009 web tool.

    reply
  • Dave Rigotti - January 6th, 2009 at 5:41 pm PST

    I’ve been using ResizeImage for a few months now… it’s great!

    reply
  • Terry Smith - January 6th, 2009 at 5:47 pm PST

    Seriously, as a tech guy for an ISP, I am from hereon out going to refer all of my customers there who try to send 50 MB e-mails with 10 pictures.

    reply
  • Damion Flynn - January 6th, 2009 at 6:10 pm PST

    I really fail to see the point in this…
    Almost every basic graphics program has this ability. Even MS Paint allows you to do this via stretch/skew.

    I do not see the need to upload an image, resize, and then have to download it afterwards.

    Maybe I am missing something here but I see absolutely no need for this from a practicality standpoint. It isn’t going to save you time and every computer should come pre-loaded with a way of doing this. Even Windows 3.1 had Paint on it which I bet had this ability…

    reply
    • Damion Flynn - January 6th, 2009 at 6:12 pm PST

      On another note – impress me and Terry Smith above – make it a bulk upload and I think we may be on to something.

      reply
      • dave - January 6th, 2009 at 6:22 pm PST

        uh, damion, like you said – there are already tons of free and amazing tools that will do this for “batches” (resize ‘em all for mac, etc) – and they don’t even require internet access, which is very important…

        a closer look reveals a site registered and created less than 12 weeks ago and privately registered, which leads me to believe (and i’ll put money on this) that arrington is in fact somehow affiliated with the service or the service’s creator – any takers on my bet?

        reply
      • Andy Gaskell - January 6th, 2009 at 6:35 pm PST

        @dave Sure, I’ll take you up on that bet. One of my friends submitted the url to TechCrunch on a whim because we were talking about the increased coverage it’s been getting lately.

        I built this site as a simple, focused tool. Not every tool needs to be enterprisey or have a ton of features. People seem to use it.

        reply
      • Michael Arrington (@arrington) - January 6th, 2009 at 11:20 pm PST

        I fire up photoshop ten times a day for image manipulation. I try to use skitch for the easy stuff since it loads faster and just rocks. But an online solution is great, too, in a pinch. I’m just not going to address the moron who thinks I’m involved with the company.

        reply
    • Wardell - January 7th, 2009 at 5:40 am PST

      here here, there are a ton of light weight image apps on any OS that are capable of resizing images why bother with uploading then downloading?

      reply
  • Barrack Obama - January 6th, 2009 at 6:29 pm PST

    Nice thing, reminds me of http://www.ioj.com ( windows only )

    reply
  • paul - January 6th, 2009 at 6:35 pm PST

    I’ve used shrinkpictures.com for years and they always do well. easy to use, though this is promising.

    reply
  • Nick Motter - January 6th, 2009 at 6:45 pm PST

    I’m the submitter and truly appreciate the kind words about the site and the post.

    I’ve never met or talked to anyone from tech crunch.

    Have you ever thought that maybe tech crunch does well because the operators truly search out interesting content for their readers?

    Why would Arrington need to game when he owns a sub 3,500 alexa ranked website… he’s already made it with great content.

    reply
  • Ajitesh - January 6th, 2009 at 7:27 pm PST

    I find this useful and handy. Great work folks! May be a bulk upload and resizing simultaneously would make it much more valuable.

    Its a classic example of “doing one thing right”..kind of reminds me of google with the clean interface in 1997-98.

    cheers!

    reply
    • Damian - January 7th, 2009 at 8:01 am PST

      ..are you really comparing this tool with Google or are you just kidding?

      I mean this tool delivers no benefit in putting image resizing to the web…it just seems to be a joke that it is covered here at TechCrunch.

      reply
  • Luke - January 6th, 2009 at 8:04 pm PST

    I agree that this is a pretty simple easy to use site. I can see it’s use on forums for resizing screenshots and stuff. Cool little site :)

    reply
  • Rob Jensen - January 6th, 2009 at 8:15 pm PST

    I have been using Shrink-O-Matic to help out with my blogging. I can’t imagine drag and drop is harder than upload loading to shrink.

    For my use I’ll stick with the app.

    reply
  • venkat - January 6th, 2009 at 8:20 pm PST

    Very useful site to resize images online, thanks for sharing

    reply
  • Cheyne - January 6th, 2009 at 8:35 pm PST

    Very cool, much better than resize.it which I was previously using.

    Simple. Basic. Does one thing. I will likely use this more than most of the advanced image editing applications out there.

    reply
  • Madhav - January 6th, 2009 at 10:26 pm PST

    Very interesting stuff.

    Not directly related to this post but wondering if there are tools that allow me to drag and drop an image (jpg, gif) to my webpage without having to go my host server and upload it through there. Is there a simpler way?

    Cheers.

    reply
  • Brian - January 6th, 2009 at 10:45 pm PST

    I’d like to see a privacy policy saying they delete images after a period of time, but other than that very useful for both me and my tech-challenged family

    reply
  • Ken Zhao - January 6th, 2009 at 11:52 pm PST

    It’s a neat web application, there’s two cons:
    1. It’s a bit slow for uploading large image in other countries.
    2. As Brian’s said, there’s no a privacy policy saying our uploaded pics will be deleted soon.

    reply
  • WTF - January 6th, 2009 at 11:54 pm PST

    This is so useless it should be an announcement in The Onion rather than a real product. Ms paint or irfanview on windows and probably similar mac products install on less time than it takes to upload a photo to this retarded site, you don’t need to be online, and there’s no issue of privacy or getting hooked on a soon to be deadpooled service. The only way this might be useful is if you don’t have a real computer handy and need to upload and crop from your iPhone, and I don’t even know if iPhones let you http-post locally stored images.
    Arrington is senile and this is fucktardedly useless.

    reply
  • Yuri Ammosov - January 7th, 2009 at 12:15 am PST

    Ever seen this?

    http://www.micr...ppowertoys.mspx

    Image Resizer

    This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click.

    http://download...wertoySetup.exe

    Works as advertized.

    reply
  • Jessy - January 7th, 2009 at 1:32 am PST

    I use http://rapidpik.com – it generates 5 different sizes (square, thumb, small, medium, large) and it keeps the original.

    By the way you can upload up to 50 images at a time.

    reply
  • Brian - January 7th, 2009 at 6:31 am PST

    I use the ImageResizer powertoy from Windows. It makes image resizing as easy as right clicking on the file. It just plain works (as long as you’re using windows) and is MUCH easier than uploading an image to resize.

    Waiting for the page to refresh (and reload the image) just to get to the advanced resizer is silly. Plus, I don’t see an option to simply enter your required dimensions. Generally, when resizing for the web, you know what dimension you want/need….why not allow people to input those dimensions instead of resizing by dragging?

    Maybe I’m missing something but I think resizing on the web like this is a waste of time.

    reply
  • Matt Sobel - January 7th, 2009 at 7:20 am PST

    this tool has no use, you can use paint, office image manager on XP and a host of other dead simple tools on mac and linux.

    Michael Arrington really sucks at his job every one of the articles I’ve read by him are absolutely useless and off base.

    I really dislike your style michael, you suck

    reply
  • ralph_w - January 7th, 2009 at 7:35 am PST

    Slow news day?

    Come on, you can do this when you INSERT a photo in Word (just click custom size and it constrains). Or, there’s Photoshop Express, Online (free) if you want to set resolutions and size.

    If anyone needs a separate program/site to do this basic function, they are just program/site junkies (which, I guess we all are, if we read TechCruch, to some degree…)

    reply
  • Justin - January 7th, 2009 at 8:11 am PST

    I, personally, see the value in a site like this. Upload your photo, resize it with your mouse (and it keeps the aspect ratio), while at the same time giving you the new dimensions of your image. You can be done in 30 seconds.

    MS Paint? Are you serious? Have you actually used Paint to resize an image lately? You have to manually enter height x width percentages, and it doesn’t give you your new dimensions. A complete waste.

    There are practical uses for an app like this: a quick image resize for an email would be the most obvious.

    reply
  • Rehan Yar Khan - January 7th, 2009 at 9:51 am PST

    why is this making news? So what if it’s an online tool? Every computer has this feature in it. Its a pain to do it online, my 5mb image is still uploading! The one previous crashed.

    MyPictr.com has been doing this for ages.

    reply
  • jaime - January 7th, 2009 at 10:33 am PST

    i couldn’t get the darn thing to work. i tried uploading a few images, but nothing happened when i clicked any of the links to resize etc. oh well, maybe user error

    reply
  • Matt Browne - January 7th, 2009 at 10:35 am PST

    My company created EasyCropper.com about 12 months ago and submitted it to Tech Crunch.

    Easy Cropper is essentially the same app as ResizeImage.org, built for the same purposes as MA describes.

    We were able to engage the editorial staff in a conversation. At the time, TC wanted to know about our financial backing, and they appeared to not be interested after our PR firm told them we were not a venture backed company.

    Whatever the reason, we got no love from TC at the time. And since then, we’ve cropped 50,000 images with very little press coverage.

    I find it odd that apps like this come out of the gates and get key placement on TC. It might not be pay to play as suggested in the comments, but timing is everything- and a little luck. Which at the time, wasn’t in our favor. How about now… Mike, how about a fair write up comparing a few of these services and let your readers decide?

    - Matt Browne

    reply
  • Peter - January 7th, 2009 at 11:44 am PST

    Seriously? Any image hosting can do this for you for about… what 10 years?

    http://www.imagesocket.com
    http://www.imageshack.us

    etc… simple.

    reply
  • Michiel van der Blonk - January 7th, 2009 at 3:34 pm PST

    Yeah, this is the most silly thing ever. It is aimed at novice users, who carry 10MP cameras. They have no use for this. Wait endlessly for an upload, figure out what to do, then wait endlessly for a download.

    Why not use Flash to do the job? No image upload required!

    I say get Windows Powertoys, or just use Office Picture Manager if you have MS Office.

    It’s a crying shame the resize pictures tool is not built into Windows in a very accessible way.

    Oh, for emails make sure to use Microsoft Live Mail, it does resize pictures.

    reply
  • giovanni - January 8th, 2009 at 4:43 am PST

    this site is awfully designed, has no terms of service, no privacy policy, tells users nothing about how and from who their images will be handled, tells nothing about image storing (it happens or not?), has an absurd bizmod based on static google ads which promote competitors sites, the “advanced editor” (the only way to insert a custom size) does not work at all on my Firefox/Ubuntu…

    …and despite all this it gets coverage from TC by mr. Arrington itself?

    reply
  • Dru Nelson - January 8th, 2009 at 4:14 pm PST

    Can someone tell me the business model here?

    reply
  • Chris - January 9th, 2009 at 7:06 pm PST

    Nice find! I’m definitively going to use this in the future!

    reply
  • Paideuma - February 6th, 2009 at 7:05 am PST

    OK, I can see a niche market for this and similar services. Being the only tech person in a family of non-tech people, I get a nervous tick every time I go to one of their houses and they tell me they have a computer problem. The tick comes from this: they download and install so much garbage on their computer that tracking down problems is a nightmare.

    Some ungodly percentage of the programs installed on these computers were downloaded to do a simple, single task: resizing an image, removing pages from PDFs, changing wall papers, etc. I’m not in the “most people shouldn’t be allowed to own a computer” snobbery camp, but I do think that there’s a huge gap between proficient computer users and … others.

    So the strength of a site like this is that it keeps people’s computers clean. I’d like to see this trend continue. I think it would result in fewer headaches for users.

    reply
  • Rob - September 17th, 2009 at 6:20 pm PDT

    ResizeImage.org is now dead.

    EasyCropper.com is so completely broken, it doesn’t work in either Firefox or IE.

    So really, this article is completely defunct, and I’m yet to find a maker of a splashy online app like these that actually became a truly easy to use, useful and reliable tool.

    reply

Leave Comment

Commenting Options

Enter your personal information to the left, or sign in with your Facebook account by clicking the button below.

Alternatively, you can create an avatar that will appear whenever you leave a comment on a Gravatar-enabled blog.

Trackback URL
  • Actively Discussed Posts
bugbugbug