For a blogger, it quite often to get image for use in you article from free image repository like Pixabay (https://pixabay.com/). They provides several different resolution images with best quality. But that also means the file image is large. A large image not only takes your blog server disk space. The main search engine, Google, takes count of page loading time for search result order.
So, for most time, I will download the proper resolution version and also downgrade the image quality to get balance between quality and file size.
Most tools are more than powerful to do simple jobs. It also needs too many steps for this simple purpose, just reduce the size. After all, I found the tool SendTo-Converter.
Quick & Easy - SendTo Converter
As the name mentioned, you can convert the image by the Windows ‘SendTo’ context menu while you right clicking a image file.
Although the main purpose in this article is to quick downgrade a JPEG image with quality factor, the tool also supports other essential functions for image processing:
- Different image format or you can do it with runtime selection
- Keep PNG / GIF transparent color
- Reduce image by file size
- Resize image (only shrink)
The program also have a very nice function ‘Add to Send-To menu’ checkbox to make user to quick have this function in your right-click context menu. This is especially very helpful for generic user with less Windows system knowledge.
For fastest way to convert your image, I suggest the following settings:
- Select output Format as JPEG
- Quality set to 60 and Sampling with 1:1
- Check the ‘Add to Send To menu’
Then, click the exit button. It will appear on the ‘Send-To’ submenu of your image context menu.
Image Quality Factor
When using the tool, the quality factor is a key parameter for size and quality. It’s not easy to have a good idea to determine the right one without comparing images with different factors. My acceptable number is 60. Maybe you can have yours by seeing the comparison below.
You may notice that the original size is smaller than quality 90. This usually means the original file is already compressed with a quality similar to 85 or so.
Download
The official website URL is http://www.vieas.com. Since it’s a Japanese website, let’s guess the author is Japanese : ) . So, the English version for download is http://www.vieas.com/en/soft.html and the SendTo-Convert is at bottom of this page. It supports almost all popular Windows versions from Windows XP to Windows 8. The article uses Windows 10 for capturing samples. So, I think it works on all major Windows releases.
