Batch Compressing JPGs

[chrispy1]

Hi all.....First thread on this here fora, and let me just say thanks. I have been / am a member on a number of different forums, so I always appreciate the hard work done by the members.

OK, on to my newbie question. I admit that I am a computer geek (both in occupation and in hobby) but I know very, very little about handling graphics. My group is responsible for supporting, testing and documenting a database application. One of the features is the users are able to attach documents, pictures, etc. - but the file size can not be any larger than 300kb. So of course I have a huge number of users either not attaching the images, or making an honest attempt to crop and resizing the picture (and usually cutting off the important part!). So, me being me figured someone out in the wild world of the Interwebs has done something about this; lo and behold, IrfanView. My problem now is I have no clue where to go from here. What I need is for a user to be able to put the images into a folder, run the batch script, and poof! the images are now down to 299Kb. I've read through the 4 or 5 threads on compression but they don't really answer my question, and so if I've duplicated a post I do apologise.

Anyone that helps gets a cookie.

Thanks in advance,
Chris

[Sam_Zen]

I don't fancy cookies, but anyway..
If it's strictly about a threshold of filesize, you may be better off with RIOT.
Still only a stand-alone version, but it's supposed to become a plugin for IrfanView.

http://en.irfanview-forum.de/vb/showthread.php?t=2045

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

If you use batch settings as in the attachment, with JPG compression options at a medium/high setting of 75, all of the images will be well within the 300 K limit.

The images will be a maximum of 600 x 600 pixels, and mostly smaller, since most will probably be 4:3 aspect ratio, or 3:4 aspect (portrait).

Smaller images will not be resized. I wonder if it would be easier to let users attach any size of image, and do the resizing yourself? That is much easier for users — some may not be too skilled in using batch files or IrfanView.

[chrispy1]

Hi all,

Thanks for the replies. RIOT doesn't allow batch processing (according to the thread listed above), and as far as IrfanView goes, I need to compress the images with the original height and width- I can do it fine in MS Picture Manager, but that's manual and reading online IrfanView does this just fine. I guess what I'm asking for isn't possible. As far as letting the users attach the files and then doing the resizing on server-side, a couple of problems with that (at least for my company): 1) We have horrible internet upload/download rates. 2) We have very limited size on the server. 3) I deal with some very untechnical people. According to the logs, someone tried attaching a 20 Mb video file to one order. There is no need for videos in my group, so why they tried I have no clue.
Thanks anyway - guess I'm back to the drawing board.
Chris