i want to begin by saying thank you Pixlr for the Batch photo editor provided for free for so many years. I understand why it has gone. Online companies, businesses have to monetise their services, especially in a very tough economy. The problem I have and I imagine other people too is getting value from premium service subscriptions when you don’t need all the bells and whistles provided. I’d be happy to pay a pound or two for the Pixlr batch editor, I just don’t want to pay £10 a month for tools I don’t use.

I am sure I am not the only one who went to use Pixlr batch editor over the weekend, a tool that lets you resize a bunch of images in one simple step and save them to your “files” on I phone. For anyone working with images for e-commerce or on websites, bloggers and website content creators large file sizes from your phone take up too much storage space and take ages to load slowing down your website visitors browsing experience. I used Pixlr batch editor pretty much every day so when the feature was removed and I was encouraged to upgrade to their premium services instead at £10 per month subscription, I was stuck.

I never mastered adobe, and it is too expensive if all you need is a basic batch editor image resizer. I tried Gimp, the “free Abobe” type product on a desktop and a laptop. Again there is a learning curve and these days I do much of my image processing either on my phone or IPad.

I downloaded a couple of apps Photoroom and Canva people were raving about online but both were paid offering a free trial period. Not really what I was looking for. All I needed was something that would resize images for me in a batch. You can still use Pixlr, if you are happy to do them one at a time, you only get three free saves per day with a way around that marketed by techies online, I didn’t get into because I want to be able to batch edit anyway. A feature that seems to have totally disappeared unless you pay. It says on google you can still do it somehow, I spent a couple of hours trying to figure it out. I didn’t succeed.

I’ve pretty much stopped using Chatgtp. When I heard Novak Djokovic talk about the struggles he had with his kids and them being the only kids in school without mobile phones “ If everyone is doing something, the herd works like this, you have to follow. Well, it doesn't have to be like that.” I could relate. I worry about Chatgtp becoming the oracle when they clearly state they get things wrong a lot so I’ve weaned myself off it and I understand what’s the difference between asking Google or any other search engine, well you don’t have to login to Google yet, to use it and you can use a VPN to protect your self. Once you login to Chatgtp they are profiling you with every question you ask. This I find spooky. Even though I use a phone that listens to me. I know. I just feel when you read about people like Open AI boss Sam Altman, information gleaned from people who actually know him in real life you wouldn’t go anywhere near something he is behind.

I was left to find out about Bulk Resize Photos on Reddit. I like Reddit and have found I’ve been using it more and more. A little like Poopsnoop, it’s real people discussing real life, products, topics, solutions to problems like this one, opinions. It’s a good source of information like eavesdropping on human experience conversations. For me that feels much safer that an isolated blogger or influencer sharing something when you don’t know their motive, if they work for the company, are a professional marketer, con person or have just been paid to be positive.

Bulk Resize Photos isn’t fancy. I think it’s Japanese as the account on X @resizephotos some posts are in Japanese. It does the job I need though, just resizing images for the web in large batches. And for free.

If you were a Pixlr batch editor user and need an easy alternative this may work for you. I know there are literally hundreds of imaging editing options out there doing all kinds of things with AI, removing backgrounds, cutting out products, enhancing images creatively even creating moving, walking talking videos from still pictures like the features in Grok so finding something simple that works and meets simple needs can be a challenge.

It’s times like this I wish I’d taken a screen shot of Pixlr Batch editor for posterity. What a great tool.

I have downloaded Google photos (for iPhone) which I have read is also very good and easy for this job of resizing images in batches, it also boasts a lot of free image storage so may end up saving me money on my iCloud subscription. I’ll snoop again when I’ve done more research.