Simple software for optimizing graphics?

[emawalton]

Hi all - I'm a newbie here. I've recently taken over webmaster duties for a non-profit group and the website has LOTS of photos. I need to shrink the files so the site won't take so long to load. I have access to Fireworks and have used this program in the past to optimize graphics but is there another (free!) program that I could download to use for this? Fireworks seems like such overkill for the simple work that I'm doing. Thanks for your help!

[aeroweb99]

If you already have FW then why look for something else? Especially when you can batch edit (optimize, among other tasks) multiple photos and export all of them at once! Seems like a no-brainer.

To answer your question I think Picasa is free and will do simple tasks. But why?!!!

[emawalton]

Only because I'm working off my laptop right now and I hate to have to load that big software program on my laptop if I don't have to haha! But it sounds like maybe that would be the best thing for me to do. I'll check out Picasa and see how it works. Thanks!

[aeroweb99]

It's just that Fireworks has really nice compression, like Photoshop does, and it has the other capabilities, and was designed for web imaging and graphics. What's one more program on your laptop?!

[squiz]

fireworks is diffinately the better way to go in terms of eas to use and efficiency any program that does a similar task tends to be just as big, your smaller programs will just take longer to do the larger tasks and if you ask me i would much prefer to have a job done and leave it to export on its own than have to sit there ind export each file individualy

[alieshaorth]

Fireworks will do everything you need it to do in probably the least amount of time and with a nice smooth compression.

Also considering you have already used this program before it will be much more efficient than learning a new one.

My advice...stick to Fireworks!

Cheers Aliesha

[petew86]

I have read and heard that Photoshop Lightroom is awesome for working with a ALLOT of photo's.

[Poseidon]

http://www.paint.net

Free, and it's like Photoshop.

[RickM]

Have you tried photoshop.com? Its free to use

Alternatively, you can download a 30 day trial of Photoshop which would be ok assuming its a one-time thing.

[System]

Photoshop is really easy to optimize graphics in, you can create a batch file to run and optimize all your files while you sit back and enjoy a drink