Irfanview Tutorial for Resizing Scanned Decks

[Dominatrix]

Hi All:
Since Gisela asked for it, and I guess it can be profitable for other users, here's a short tutorial about how to resize decks obtained from the Web (or scanned by yourselves).

First of all, get Irfanview from www.irfanview.com. Program it's free, and don't be fooled by its tiny 800Kb size: it's more powerful than ACDSee and other big and expensive graphic tools (except for PhotoShop CS). Last version is 3.95, and comes in two flavours: Irfanview Only or Irfanview Plugins. For our purpose, plain Irfanview is OK, plugins are extra components for reading exotic formats and perform special functions, and goes for 3Mb.

Iview (for short) has batch renaming, conversion and resizing capabilities, but you must be really careful doing this to avoid unwanted effects. Batch processing is dumb, and just applies the settings you specified...

Let's asume you have one of that nifty WWPCM decks scanned: width goes around 384 pixels, and lenght varies depending on the card, but it's not the same for all cards, showing some unpleasant movement when using the deck on Orphalese, or making the deck too big for working with it. We'll do the trick in two stages: first making all graphics same size, and later resizing to a smaller resolution for screen.

You have a folder with XX cards, JPG format. Nice. Open first graphic on Iview and take note of the size of the card (program shows it on lower left corner of the visualization window). Press B for accessing batch operations ( or select Batch Conversion / Renaming from File menu)

You'll access a new window. Right pane is for the available files, left one (empty for now) for the files you're about to convert. Since we're going to work with the whole deck, press Add All and all the card files will be available on left pane. Buttons next to this are pretty self explanatory.

On Work As, check Batch Conversion radio button. On Output Directory, you can specify a different folder for the resulting files, or Use This Directory As Ouput if you plan to overwrite the original files (not recommended for beginners). Take care on this step, since a bad choice can ruin your deck or doing absolutely nothing with the files if you use same folder and there's no Overwrite setting.

So far, so good... Set the output format below (JPG is OK), tick the Use Advanced Options and press the same button below. Please don't panic!

Just make sure that CROP is unmarked and tick RESIZE. Mark Set both sides to: and specify the width and height you noted before. Tick pixels, below Use Resample function (better quality), even below 16,7 Million Colors and just unmark any control marked on the right column. We'll use Set new size as a percentage of the original for second pass, so leave it unmarked for now. Press OK and you'll return to previous screen. If everything is ready, just press Start and go!

If you did all the steps, you'll have a copy of your files in the specified folder, ALL THE SAME SIZE in pixels you specified. Check the results and, if they're OK, delete old folder.

Repeat the same procedure for making cards smaller: this time, tick Set new size as a percentage of the original and specify a percentage. Around 50-60 percent is OK, if not sure wich figure you'll need, open any card and press the Minus key for zooming out. Third figure in the lower bar is the zoom out factor: note the one that suit your tastes and apply it later as the resize factor.

Batch renaming uses same conventions. Fill the left pane with files, tick Batch Rename and, in Name Pattern, just put two ##, that means from 1 to 99. Set Starting Index to 0 (important! since Default is 1, and OT starts cards on 00), Increment on 1 and tick first option below, Copy original/input files to output directory (recommended). Once you're used to the program, you can resize/rename using the Overwrite original files on the very same folder, saving time and disk space.

I know this is longer to explain than to do, but you can process a lot of decks in no time, instead of painfully using a graphic editor card-by-card. Hope this helps, best.

[Programmer]

Thanks Dominatrix for this excellent article, and also thanks Shari for suggesting the program in the first place. I am now up and running with IView and busy uploading decks from WWPCM!

[Gisela Rodriguez]

Thanks so much Dom!

This is really helpful!

Hugs
Gisela