Photo Magician does simple, quality batch image resizing for free

One type of program I often forget to load on a fresh Windows install is a good photo resizing tool. Sometimes -- like when I want to create a screenshot tour of an app -- it would make things simpler to just dump a pile of full-size screenshots into a folder and let some little app churn out images resized to the dimensions I need.

Photo Magician is an excellent option. It weighs in at under 1MB, and it comes with a laundry list of presets for various devices (iPhone, Nintendo DS, PSP, Zune) and common pixel dimensions (640x480, etc.). You can also scale to a custom size or percentage, exclude images under a certain size, swap formats, and even process the sub-folders inside your input folder. Conversions are fast, and the quality of converted images is very good.

Launch the quick convert mode and the top hat window appears on your desktop. Set your percentage, drag and drop a folder onto it, and Photo Magician starts the conversion.

I couldn't locate a download link on the author's site, but you can grab Photo Magician from Softpedia. The .Net 2.0 framework is required, but you've already got that if you're running Vista or Windows 7 -- which makes Photo Magician portable for many of our readers.