In these days and ages of sophisticated technologies, it is disappointing to see people emailing and uploading their 10-megapixel photos in full size, just to be displayed on computer screens. The problem is that it takes forever to email or upload all those huge photos, several megabytes each, to your friends, not to mention that it will also take forever for them to download these huge images. This is an unacceptably inefficient way to transfer images over the internet.

Now if we think about it, there are over a zillion programs already made for resizing and making images smaller, yet people still share their photos in full size. What gives? Having tried a handful of such programs that can resize images, I think the inherent problem is in the usability. I mean, why did I have to go through a hundred steps before I could resize my images? Why did these app developers make it so difficult to just make images smaller?

Believing that everybody should not have to put up with that, I took the liberty to make this program Quick Image Resize which like the name suggests resizes images as fast as possible in just ONE step. The user interface in my opinion is relatively simple and easy to use (if it is not, I do welcome constructive feedback). The default setting will resize images in various formats and save as JPEG about 40KB each in the 'Small' subfolder.

Give it a try. Download Quick Image Resize 1.0 (FREE) below.

Download Link:

QuickImageResizeSetup.msi (545KB)

Disclaimer: The programs are provided as is without any guarantees or warranty. Although the author has attempted to find and correct any bugs in the free software programs, the author is not responsible for any damage or losses of any kind caused by the use or misuse of the programs. The author is under no obligation to provide support, service, corrections, or upgrades to the free software programs.

Just finished half way through Ren Ng's thesis on Light Field Camera--Ren Ng is the CEO of Lytro.

If I understand it correctly, these are the characteristics of his LF camera:

• An array of micro lenses is fitted in front of the image sensor. A micro lens will cover a group of pixels on the sensor, so basically a micro lens will represent a pixel in the output image.
• Image resolution will be reduced. How much it is depends entirely on the number and size of the micro lenses. The minimal size of a micro lens is limited to the lens optics. Optimal resolution appears to be reduced to 1/16th (16MP to 1MP).
• The purpose of a micro lens is to capture the directions of the light. Conventionally, a pixel records photons from all directions. A micro lens would directionalize the light hitting the pixels (forcing a pixel to record photons only from one direction). One direction each, a group of pixels under the micro lens will record light from all directions. I use "directionalize" here because technically it isn't the same as "polarize".
• To digitally refocus and to get the final image, the software program simply ray traces the light, one pixel at a time. Ray tracing is normally a computationally intensive task in 3D but for LF data, this should be extremely fast since the RGB values of the pixels are already there; it's just a matter of picking the right pixels on the sensor to produce the final image. Per-color-channel ray tracing could be used to completely eliminate chromatic aberration from the image.
• Show Stopper: I'm not too sure about this but I believe such LF camera will not make the depth of field shallower beyond the lens'. The way it works, we should be seeing only LF cameras equipped with a large sensor at least APS-C size and with standard DSLR lenses. If you put the array of micro lenses on top of a P&S sensor, it wouldn't make a difference anyway since the DoF is already too deep; it would be pointless. Besides, it's probably extremely difficult to produce smaller micro lenses for P&S sensor. So my speculation is we will only seeing LF cameras in DSLR, ILC or Fixed Lens Camera instead of LF P&S.
• So yes, if you want shallow DoF, you'll need to get a lens that gives shallow DoF. 
• While can't get shallower DoF, it can however extend DoF to get everything in focus. Again, it's just a matter of picking the right pixels.
• Ren Ng talks about producing a 160MP sensor so that the final image will get around 10MP. Such LF DSLR however will greatly reduce the low light performance. It would be like losing 4 stops of light.

The promise of a LF DSLR is to allow you to refocus after the fact. Make no mistake, it can be a paradigm shift in photography. It could probably be the age of point-and-shoot APS-C Mirrorless Compacts!