Best way to "smartly" resize around 750 images in CS:5?

[OCdude]

I've got aroud 750 album covers i need to resize to 300x300 px. However, some of the images aren't perfect squares and are slightly rectangular.

Previously when i've done this, I just made a batch job that set the larger of the axis' to 300px, while maintaining the ratio. This results in the right size (300x300 or smaller) but they were still rectangular.

I've tied manually resizing using "fit image" but that seems to just do what I did above (keeps the file under the 300x300 constraints, but doesn't squash/blow up the image to make it 'fit').

The images aren't massively rectangular - so i'm hoping CS:5 has a magical feature that lets you resize/reshape images like this without making them look stupid?

Or maybe i'm talking poo?

Any help appreciated!

Thanks

 

[A.N.Other]

So you want to resize the images to 300x300px, altering the aspect ratio if necessary?

In CS3 it's this, it'll be the same / similar in 5:
Image > Image Size (CTRL + ALT + I) > untick 'constrain proportions' and put 300 by 300 in.

Make an action of that and then just run it for the whole batch.

 

[OCdude]

Thanks for the reply. Hmm i'm not liking the end result Looks really obviously stretched when do it like that

Wondering if there's a way to resize them to be square, but without stretching/squashing them so obviously.

Probably asking a bit much i think

 

[A.N.Other]

Well if you want the aspect ratio the same, then there's no way you can make them square unless you fit the longest side to 300 and then fill the empty space with a colour of your choice. Obviously that's not ideal either.

 

[analog]

I recently had to do something similar with a load of product images.

The best solution I found was to import all the images as layers via bridge and then manually resize them, cropping or rebuilding areas of the image where I could, then batch saving the layers.

The process wasn't too tedious and incorporating A.N.Other's solution would probably make it less so.

Also depending on what the cover looks like you might get away with using content aware scaling to help keep aspect ratio but not make the cover look wildly different.

 

[OCdude]

I recently had to do something similar with a load of product images.

The best solution I found was to import all the images as layers via bridge and then manually resize them, cropping or rebuilding areas of the image where I could, then batch saving the layers.

The process wasn't too tedious and incorporating A.N.Other's solution would probably make it less so.

Also depending on what the cover looks like you might get away with using content aware scaling to help keep aspect ratio but not make the cover look wildly different.

Ahh yes, that's it! Content aware scaling

Now, excuse the noobery, but how do i do that?

Although actually... i'm assuming i'd have to downsize them first, constraining to 300x300 (therefore ending up with an image around 300x250) then scale it up a bit?

 

[analog]

Edit >> content aware scale

You could scale them down, make the shortest side fit with normal scaling then try make the other fit using content aware scale.

It's probably best you try both methods, I don't know if its better at adding content (scaling up) or removing content (scaling down). You might also want to consider content aware fill, if the album cover is fairly simple you'd be surprised at how well it can fill in the empty space.

 

[OCdude]

Thanks for the tips. Just been fiddling around with the content-aware stuff. It works nicely on some, but not so well on others.

Overall, i think im just going to bulk resize and just live with the rectangular ones

Thanks guys