This PC “how-to” guide teaches a great way to resize image files “losslessly”; without losing any visible image quality. If you find this tutorial useful, please consider sharing, donating to, and/or buying from Oddscene. Join the email list (opens in new tab) for infrequent artist updates.
Reducing Image File Sizes Using FileOptimizer
FileOptimizer is an excellent free/donationware software tool, first released by its creator, Javier Gutiérrez Chamorro (“Guti”) in 2012. Javier generously maintains this amazingly useful software to this day, which can be downloaded from his website. There’s also a whole bunch of other great software there (all open source), including our perennial favourite, SumatraPDF.
How to Use FileOptimizer to Resize Image Files
- Download and install FileOptimizer to your PC.
- Take a moment to acclimatise to the interface and tweak the program’s settings to your liking (Optimize > Options).
- Drag whatever file(s) you wish to optimise into the software’s main file list.
- Unless you’ve changed the relevant settings, FileOptimizer uses lossless compression and does not create a backup by default.
- Ready? Simply right-click and select “Optimize all files” from the resulting context menu.
- Dependent on the amount of ‘unnecessary’ data attached to the file(s), results might be anything from nothing at all to roughly seventy percent, in our experience.
Reducing the size of image files by relatively small amounts (perhaps a few kilobytes on average) really does add up to a lot of space saving. For example, our archive holds over twenty-thousand PDFs, each of which has now been reduced, saving roughly twenty-five percent of the storage space it used previously.
Oddscene uses FileOptimizer to resize image files as the software is the best we’ve found in its class. It’s open source, free (although donations are welcomed) and collects a lot of useful tools and features all in one place, accessed through a simple, clean interface.
By the way, FileOptimizer isn’t just used to resize image files, but is useful for optimising many common (and less common) file formats too. As per its website, these currently include: .3G2, .3GG, .3GP, .7Z, .A, .AAI, .AC, .ACC, .ADP, .AI, .AIR, .APK, .APNG, .APPX, .APR, .ART, .ART, .AVI, .AVS, .BAR, .BMP, .BPG, .BPL, .BSZ, .CBT, .CBZ, .CDR, .CDT, .CHI, .CHM, .CHQ, .CHS, .CHW, .CIN, .CMYK, .CMYKA, .CPL, .CSL, .CSS, .CUR, .DB, .DB, .DCX, .DDS, .DEB, .DES, .DIB, .DLL, .DOC, .DOCM, .DOCX, .DOT, .DOTM, .DOTX, .DPX, .DRV, .DWF, .DWFX, .EAR, .EASM, .EML, .EMLX, .EPDF, .EPDF, .EPRT, .EPUB, .EXE, .FAX, .FAX, .FB2, .FDF, .FITS, .FLA, .FLAC, .FLV, .FPX, .FPX, .FXG, .FXG, .GALLERY, .GALLERYCOLLECTION, .GALLERYITEM, .GFT, .GIF, .GRAY, .GRS, .GZ, .HDR, .HRZ, .HTM, .HTML, .ICB, .ICL, .ICO, .ICO, .INK, .INLINE, .IPA, .IPK, .IPSW, .ITA, .ITS, .ITZ, .J2C, .J2K, .JAR, .JFI, .JFIF, .JIF, .JNG, .JP2, .JPC, .JPE, .JPEG, .JPG, .JPS, .JPT, .JS, .JSON, .KML, .KMZ, .KMZ, .KSF, .LIB, .LIT, .LUA, .LUAC, .LXF, .LZL, .LZMA, .M4A, .M4B, .M4P, .M4R, .M4V, .MAX, .MBX, .MCE, .MDB, .MDT, .MDZ, .MHT, .MHT, .MHTML, .MHTML, .MIC, .MIF, .MIFF, .MIX, .MIZ, .MK3D, .MKA, .MKS, .MKV, .MMIP, .MNG, .MONO, .MOV, .MP3, .MP4, .MPC, .MPD, .MPEG, .MPG, .MPO, .MPP, .MPP, .MPR, .MPT, .MSC, .MSG, .MSG, .MSI, .MSL, .MSP, .MST, .MSZ, .MTV, .MTW, .MVG, .MVZ, .MZZ, .NAR, .NBK, .NOTEBOOK, .O, .OBJ, .OCX, .ODB, .ODF, .ODG, .ODP, .ODS, .ODT, .OEX, .OGA, .OGG, .OGG, .OGM, .OGV, .OGX, .OGX, .OLE, .OLE2, .ONE, .OPT, .OPUS, .ORA, .OSK, .OST, .OTB, .OXPS, .P7, .PALM, .PBM, .PCC, .PCD, .PCDS, .PCL, .PCLS, .PCX, .PDB, .PDF, .PFM, .PFS, .PGM, .PIC, .PICON, .PICT, .PK3, .PNG, .PNM, .PNS, .POTM, .POTX, .PPAM, .PPM, .PPS, .PPSM, .PPSX, .PPT, .PPTM, .PPTX, .PSB, .PSD, .PTIF, .PTIF, .PTIFF, .PTIFF, .PUB, .PUB, .PUZ, .QT, .QWK, .R2SKIN, .RA, .RAM, .RDB, .RDB, .RFA, .RFG, .RFT, .RGB, .RGBA, .RLL, .RM, .RMSKIN, .RMVB, .RTE, .RV, .RVT, .S3Z, .SCR, .SGI, .SGML, .SLDASM, .SLDDRW, .SLDM, .SLDPRT, .SLDX, .SMIL, .SOU, .SPL, .SPO, .SPX, .SQLITE, .SQLITE2, .SQLITE3, .STZ, .SUN, .SVG, .SVGZ, .SWC, .SWF, .SYS, .TAR, .TGA, .TGZ, .THM, .TIF, .TIFF, .UYVY, .VBX, .VCARD, .VCF, .VDA, .VDX, .VICAR, .VIFF, .VLT, .VOB, .VSD, .VSS, .VST, .VST, .VSX, .VTX, .WAL, .WAR, .WAV, .WBA, .WBMP, .WEBA, .WEBM, .WEBP, .WIZ, .WMA, .WMV, .WMZ, .WPS, .WSZ, .X, .XAP, .XBM, .XHTML, .XHTML, .XL, .XLA, .XLAM, .XLC, .XLM, .XLS, .XLSB, .XLSM, .XLSX, .XLTM, .XLTX, .XLW, .XML, .XML, .XMZ, .XNK, .XPI, .XPM, .XPS, .XSF, .XSL, .XSLT, .XSN, .XWD, .YCBR, .YCBRA, .YUB, .Z01, .Z02, .Z03, .Z04, .Z05, .Z06, .Z07, .Z08, .Z09, .Z10, .ZIP, .ZIPX, .ZX01, .ZX02, .ZX03, .ZX04, .ZX05, .ZX05, .ZX06, .ZX07, .ZX08, .ZX09, .ZX10, STICKYNOTES.SNT, and THUMBS.DB!