How to Put Pictures on a Digital Picture Frame

Digital picture frames are getting pretty popular these days, with the price coming down and the quality going up drastically. I myself bought one of these gizmos recently, and am quite pleased with it. The first question I had after I bought it, though, was how should I put my pictures on it in an optimized manner (meaning, without taking up a whole lot of disk storage space while at the same time allowing the images to look pleasing to the eye)?

I did some research, and tried out a few freeware software programs, and would like to share my results with you. Just to give an idea of my results, the digital picture frame I have has 12MB of internal memory, and I was able to fit over 200 pictures on it with outstanding viewing quality!

Basically, putting pictures onto a digital picture frame involves the following steps:

• Crop the images so that they exhibit the same proportions as the digital picture frame
• Resize the images to fit the exact dimensions of the digital picture frame

These steps are described in more detail below. Please beware, it's going to be necessary to do some math in some of these steps, albeit not very complicated math. Also, I'll admit the steps might take some time to get through, probably the first time through at least. However, I'm pretty confident that after getting through the steps, the results will speak for themselves.

Crop the Images

Cropping the images is necessary in order for the aspect ratios of the digital picture frame and the digital camera to match so that the digital picture frame displays the images properly. If the aspect ratios don't match, the digital picture frame might display the images streched, skewed, or with parts of the images cut off that you don't necessarily want cut off. Keep in mind, cropping the images is really the same as cutting off a part of the images too, however, at least you'll have control over which part of the images to cut off.

Figure Out Aspect Ratio of Digital Picture Frame

First, figure out what the ratio is of the digital picture frame. My digital picture frame has a resolution of 720x480 pixels. Therefore, the aspect ratio can be calculated by dividing the height by the width:

      480 (height) / 720 (width) = .67 aspect ratio of the digital picture frame

Figure Out Aspect Ratio of Pictures

Next, figure out what the ratio is of the pictures taken with the digital camera. The pictures taken with my digital camera have a resolution of 2272x1704 pixels. Therefore, the aspect ratio for these pictures is:

      1704 (height) / 2272 (width) = .75 aspect ratio of the pictures

Crop Images (if Necessary)

If the ratios happen to match, you're in luck, and can immediately skip to the next section, Resize the Images. If the ratios don't match, as in the case of this example (since .67 does not equal .75), the images should be cropped first.

To crop the images, I used a free program called JPEGCrops. This program can be used for cropping multiple images at once to save time, instead of cropping the images one at a time. Basically, here are the steps I took to crop the images (I did these steps using version v0.7.5 beta of the software):

• Launch the JPEGCrops software.
• Load the folder where the images from the digital camera are located, by clicking on File > Open Folder. This will load all jpeg images from this folder onto the screen.
• Click Edit > Set All Aspects, then select an aspect ratio that matches the digital picture frame's aspect ratio. In my case, I selected the aspect ratio 4" x 6" because if calculated by dividing the height by the width (4 divided by 6) I get .67, which matches the .67 aspect ratio of my digital picture frame. For this step, it might be necessary to do some calculations, basically dividing the height by the width for each of the aspect ratios shown in the menu, until finding the aspect ratio that matches the digital picture frame's aspect ratio.
• For each image, move the slider window over the portion of the image to keep. The dark-gray area is the area of the image that will get cropped (i.e. cut off).
• Make sure the to dir at the bottom of the software's window points to a valid folder. This is the folder where the cropped images will get placed.
• Click the Crop All Images button, which crops all the images and places them into the to dir folder.

Resize the Images

For this step, I used a free Microsoft download called Image Resizer. I don't think this download works in Windows Vista. However, Windows Vista users can try a program called VSO Image Resizer, which I haven't tried but from what I saw does the same thing as Microsoft's Image Resizer. After installing the software, here are the steps to take (these steps apply to Microsoft's Image Resizer).

• In Windows Explorer, go to the folder where the images were cropped.
• Right-click the cropped images and click the Resize Pictures option.
• Click the Advanced button, then click the Custom option.
• Next to the Custom option, type in the exact resolution of the digital picture frame. Since my digital picture frame is 720x480, I typed in 720 by 480.
• (Optional) Click the Resize the original pictures option so the resized images won't get placed in new files (i.e. they'll just overwrite the cropped image files).
• Click the OK button.

This will resize the pictures to fit the exact resolution of the digital picture frame. When I performed this step on my images, the size of each image was reduced from 2MB down to about 50Kb, which is a significant disk storage space savings!

The final step required is to copy these resized images to the digital picture frame (either to the digital picture frame's internal memory, or to a memory stick/USB flash drive that will plug into the digital picture frame).

That's it, enjoy viewing the pictures!

By Anonymous