# resizing for screensaver pics



## Laurie (Jan 9, 2009)

How do I resize a photo to the correct size while still maintaining the aspect ratio? I want to get rid of the ugly pre-installed screensavers and use my own, but when I try resizing pictures I always end up with odd sizes like 542 x 800 or 600 x 794... anything BUT 600 x 800.


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

Many applications will allow you to crop at a specific aspect ratio. That is the best way to get the pics the perfect size. If you are unable to do so with your application, post your pics and someone here will be happy to do so for you.


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## Laurie (Jan 9, 2009)

pidgeon92 said:


> Many applications will allow you to crop at a specific aspect ratio. That is the best way to get the pics the perfect size. If you are unable to do so with your application, post your pics and someone here will be happy to do so for you.


Thanks pidgeon. I'll give it another go tonight and if I get stuck I'll post back for help.


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## ZomZom (Feb 17, 2009)

You can either crop the photo, which means to trim the photo and remove information, or you can add blank space to the sides, or top/bottom like a letterboxed movie.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

What ZomZom said...to preserve the aspect ration, you'll either have to crop or add "white" space.  In Paint Shop Pro, the graphics program I use most often, I can change the canvas size and it will add white space as desired, all around, all at the top, at the bottom or whatever.  Other programs are sure to have something similar.  I say "white" because I can also set the color of the space added.  In some cases, for Kindle screensavers, black or a gray may be a better choice than white.

Betsy


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## patrisha w. (Oct 28, 2008)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> What ZomZom said...to preserve the aspect ration, you'll either have to crop or add "white" space. In Paint Shop Pro, the graphics program I use most often, I can change the canvas size and it will add white space as desired, all around, all at the top, at the bottom or whatever. Other programs are sure to have something similar. I say "white" because I can also set the color of the space added. In some cases, for Kindle screensavers, black or a gray may be a better choice than white.
> 
> Betsy


This has nothing to do with what the OP asked but I have to say that although I LUUUURVE my IMac, I hate that I lost PSP...{sob}
patrisha


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

patrisha said:


> This has nothing to do with what the OP asked but I have to say that although I LUUUURVE my IMac, I hate that I lost PSP...{sob}
> patrisha


The Mac has wonderful graphics programs, but yes, I love PSP too...I've had it since I think version 2 at least, maybe 1 and now it's up to 12.

Betsy


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

patrisha said:


> This has nothing to do with what the OP asked but I have to say that although I LUUUURVE my IMac, I hate that I lost PSP...{sob}
> patrisha


Try Pixelmator. It is $59, and is a wonderful program. You can download a trial version... I've gone through a lot of image applications, this is my favorite.

http://www.pixelmator.com/


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

It looks great, Verena!  I'm frequently asked for recommendations for programs, this is a good one to know about!

Betsy


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## ZomZom (Feb 17, 2009)

What I did was buy Photoshop from ebay.  If you go back a few versions you can get a legal, licensed copy for much less than the current retail price.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

That's a great tip if you need the full blown Photoshop!  If you only want to do some casual photo editing, these other tools are great too.

I even like Picasa for quick and dirty editing--cropping, contrast, sharpening, switching to black and white--might be great for making screensavers, I haven't tried it.  I use it mostly to send pics to friends as it resizes them automatically.

Betsy


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## SimonStern2 (Feb 26, 2009)

I use Photoshop Elements. 

When you use the selection tool, you can choose HOW it works by changing the settings just below the menu bar.  One option is "fixed aspect ratio."  I do 3 x 4 (which is the same as 6x8 and, you guessed it 600 x 800) then I select the area of the photo I want and when I resize it, it will come out to exactly 600x800.  Of course, you have to start with an image LARGER than 600x800.  (Well, you can use a smaller image, but the resize may introduce weird artifacts and could make the picture look pixelated.)


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## marianneg (Nov 4, 2008)

Since we're discussing photo-editing tools, I'll mention a freebie that I've used with quite a bit of success: paint.net. It's pretty easy and intuitive for the basics, and seems to have similar controls to Photoshop. I used the magic wand tool to crop the background out of a picture the other day, and it worked perfectly. It is Windows only, though.


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## farmwife99 (Nov 22, 2008)

I also use Photoshop Elements.
I found it fairy easy to get the basic functions down but am still learning more all the time how to extra things.


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## Leslie (Apr 7, 2008)

Farmwife, please forgive this on the open board but...with a name with double quotes in it, ie, Farmwife"723" people can't send you PMs. If you change it to Farmwife '723' or something else, you should be all set. The double quotes are the problem.

Leslie
Global Mod


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## wilsondm2 (Dec 8, 2008)

I too use photoshop elements and love it, however I found a very good on-line graphics program that even got Walt Mossbergs thumbsup.  Picnik.com is free and powerful. BUT-you can subscribe for 24.95 a year and it becomes even more powerful. Very intuitive.


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## Laurie (Jan 9, 2009)

Thanks everybody for the help and all the great tips. I haven't had time to actually try any of them yet.... but I'll get there. I've been so busy lately, and what little free time I do manage to squeeze in is spent on reading my K2. Can't wait to change those ugly screensavers. Hopefully soon..... Thanks again.


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## srmalloy (Mar 3, 2009)

Laurie said:


> How do I resize a photo to the correct size while still maintaining the aspect ratio? I want to get rid of the ugly pre-installed screensavers and use my own, but when I try resizing pictures I always end up with odd sizes like 542 x 800 or 600 x 794... anything BUT 600 x 800.


What I've been doing using Paint Shop Pro, generally with images that were odd sizes and aspect ratios, goes something like this:


Decide whether I will be using the whole image or a section cropped from it as the screen image
If using a section, block out either the width or height, making the other section wider/longer than the 3x4 aspect ratio of the Kindle 2 screen and crop the image to that section.
Resize the image to either 600 pixels wide or 800 pixels tall, whichever size maximizes the other dimension (i.e., a 1600x1200 image scaled to 800 pixels tall would be 1067 pixels wide, but scaled to 600 pixels wide would be only 450 high, so I'd go with the 1067x800 scaling).
Crop the scaled image to 600x800, positioning the cropping window to preserve as much of the focus of the artwork as possible in the crop area.
Convert the image to greyscale.
Fiddle with contrast and histogram adjustment, as well as sharpening the image, to see whether the appearance of the image can be improved by simple manipulation.
Reduce the number of colors in the image to 16, using error diffusion to reduce banding.
Save the edited image as a new file.

So, starting with this image (part of a screenshot from the superhero MMORPG City of Heroes):


The best match for resizing is 800 pixels tall, so after resizing, cropping, and enhancing the midtones a bit for contrast, the resultant 16-color image is this:


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## Laurie (Jan 9, 2009)

srmalloy said:


> What I've been doing using Paint Shop Pro, generally with images that were odd sizes and aspect ratios, goes something like this:
> 
> 
> Decide whether I will be using the whole image or a section cropped from it as the screen image
> ...


Thanks for that. I just printed it out so I can use it when I finally have some time to play. I've found a few pictures I'd like to use and NONE of them are currently at the right size.


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

FYI, I posted this in the Bargains board, but there is a new MacHeist bundle (Mac applications only) that has two image editors in it (12 applications total for only *$39*). Acorn is included in the bundle, and is a great image editor that can be used for making screensavers. The bundle is only available until 4/7/09.


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## patrisha w. (Oct 28, 2008)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> The Mac has wonderful graphics programs, but yes, I love PSP too...I've had it since I think version 2 at least, maybe 1 and now it's up to 12.
> 
> Betsy


oh, I stopped at version 8 {although I did buy 9} The focus of the program changed when Jasc got picked up by Corel.

I wasn't so much interested in the photograph per se as what artistic effect I could get with the photograph...

patrisha


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## srmalloy (Mar 3, 2009)

Laurie said:


> Thanks for that. I just printed it out so I can use it when I finally have some time to play. I've found a few pictures I'd like to use and NONE of them are currently at the right size.


Something I noticed last night when I installed the screensaver hack and uploaded a bunch of images was that many of the images looked bad or odd on the Kindle screen. So I dug into the original screensaver images and I discovered what appeared to be the problem. All of the Kindle 2's screensaver images have a palette that runs from white at index 0 to black at index 15:









When I was down-converting images to 4 bits per pixel in Paint Shop Pro, the greyscales in the palette were not necessarily in that order, or even in any particular order. The Kindle apparently makes the assumption that the palette is a fixed order to save the additional overhead of actually *reading* he image palette. To fix my existing images, I took the Kindle image I'd opened and saved its palette to disk, then for each of my other images, loaded that palette file into the image's palette, matching to closest color in the load, then saving the image again. For new screensaver conversion, though, it changed the process a little bit:


Decide whether I will be using the whole image or a section cropped from it as the screen image
If using a section, block out either the width or height, making the other section wider/longer than the 3x4 aspect ratio of the Kindle 2 screen and crop the image to that section.
Resize the image to either 600 pixels wide or 800 pixels tall, whichever size maximizes the other dimension (i.e., a 1600x1200 image scaled to 800 pixels tall would be 1067 pixels wide, but scaled to 600 pixels wide would be only 450 high, so I'd go with the 1067x800 scaling).
Crop the scaled image to 600x800, positioning the cropping window to preserve as much of the focus of the artwork as possible in the crop area.
Convert the image to greyscale.
Fiddle with contrast and histogram adjustment, as well as sharpening the image, to see whether the appearance of the image can be improved by simple manipulation. (What I've found here is that using the histogram Stretch function, which expands the shade range of the image to make sure that pure white and pure black appear in the image, then a histogram adjustment to bring the full-black/full white points are about 10 units in, gives improved contrast on the Kindle display)
Load the palette file that I'd saved from the Kindle stock screensaver image, with 'error diffusion' as the color-matching option. This turns the image into an indexed-color image using the Kindle's palette order and decreases the colors to 16 greyscales.
Save the image as a .png file

I also noticed that the Kindle didn't appear to be happy with long file names for the screensaver images; when I loaded some test images, I found that images with long file names, like '13_Tea_house_at_Koishikawa._The_morning_after_a_snowfall.png' (one of Hiroshige's "Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji") wouldn't display, but it would if I shortened the file name.


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## Laurie (Jan 9, 2009)

srmalloy said:


> Something I noticed last night when I installed the screensaver hack and uploaded a bunch of images was that many of the images looked bad or odd on the Kindle screen. So I dug into the original screensaver images and I discovered what appeared to be the problem. All of the Kindle 2's screensaver images have a palette that runs from white at index 0 to black at index 15:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Wow - i'm impressed! I'm also scared. This is sounding like it might be more complicated than I thought it would be. Once I get started, I'm sure I'll be back with a hundred more questions.


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## srmalloy (Mar 3, 2009)

Laurie said:


> Wow - i'm impressed! I'm also scared. This is sounding like it might be more complicated than I thought it would be. Once I get started, I'm sure I'll be back with a hundred more questions.


Actually, even working with the old PSP version 7 I have on my computer at work, once you do it the first time, it becomes pretty much automatic, since you're basically applying the same settings for each tool in sequence to each image you work on, at least with Paint Shop Pro; when I get home I want to see how easy it will be to record a script in PSP X2 to handle the steps automatically except for the resize and crop window positioning.


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