Easy image resizing and rotating in Ubuntu

By Hamish Taylor
Friday, 30 January 2009 07:47

Opinion and Analysis

Easy, quick and simple image resizing and rotating is important to many people. When using Windows, you're able to download and install the Image Resizer "PowerToy". You can then manipulate images directly from Windows Explorer. But how do you do the same task in Ubuntu?

The answer is actually remarkably simple and is almost the same as the Windows solution. Nautilus-image-converter gives you pretty much the same functionality as the Windows Image Resizer PowerToy.

To download and install, go to use System, Administration, Synaptic Package Manager. Type in your password when prompted. Click on Seach and type in nautilus-image-converter. Once it has been found, right click on it and select "Mark for Installation". Click Apply and wait for the download and installation. The file is only 279kB, so it won't take long.

Once the installation is completed, using the Nautilus File Manager, you'll be able to right click on an image, select "Resize image..." or "Rotate image..."  and do various thing to it. The most obvious being to resize or rotate images!





























You can resize using a drop-down of various pre-definined sizes (which are: 96x96, 128x128, 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, or 1280x960). Alternatively, you can scale the image using a percentage or you can set a custom size.

You can also elect to leave the original image in place and create a second image which gets named .resized at the end of the filename.














You can even highlight multiple images and do all of them at the same time.

The Rotate dialog box is pretty easy to use too. You can set a predefined angle or set your own angle. The options for file saving are the same as above.














I am an amateur photographer. But the only post-processing that I do of images is using this extension. It allows me to easily change images for upload to web galleries or send via email. I hope that someone else finds this extension useful and one less reason to be using Windows!