This resizing skill has been somewhat overlooked because it’s a bit buried away in the menubar under ‘Tools’. But, in my usage of it, I’ve found it to be flexible and useful – surpassing shareware apps such as EasyBatchPhoto, and rather lacklustre freeware apps such as iZoom or PhotoDrop.

Before you start resizing with Preview, though, be aware that Preview will overwrite your current files, so have back-ups ready in case you don’t like the results. So, here’s how to get Preview.app to resize a bunch of photos…

1. Open the images that you’d like to resize, in the Preview app.
2. This is important: select one image, so that the thumbnail in the sidebar is highlighted blue, then do a ‘Select All’ (hit: Command/Apple and A) so that all the thumbnails are highlighted in blue.
3. In the menubar, navigate to ‘Tools’ and then click on ‘Adjust Size…’ (see image, below):

4. Now the Image Dimensions box appears, and you can now choose how you’re going to scale all your photos. I usually take my overly-large 3648 x 2432 photos down to a more manageable 2400 x 1600, which also reduces the file size by nearly half, without any perceptible loss in quality. (see image, below):

5. Once you’ve picked the right dimensions, hit ‘OK’ on that Image Dimensions box.
6. Wait for the images to be resized, as indicated by the progress bar. This could take a few minutes for very large files, or hundreds of images.
7. Nearly finished… But, wait, because the new images have not yet been saved. Navigate to ‘File’ in the menubar and click on ‘Save All’. A progress bar appears as the images are saved. (See image, below):

Ta-da…!

OK, all done. The only caveat is that landscape- and portrait-oriented photos and images need to be done separately, which can be a bit of a pain.

So, that’s how the Preview app can save you money and get your photos resized with no loss of quality, saving you time on uploads, and space on your hard-drive.

Before you check out the video screencast, just think of a dictionary or thesaurus that you’d like to have added to your Mac’s Dictionary, and then Google around to hopefully find a free or open-source version of a Leopard-compatible dictionary. It would need to be a folder with the file-name “.dictionary”. Note that this manual method works only with Leopard (10.5) and Snow Leopard (10.6). Or the third-party dictionary might come as an installer package (“.mpkg” file), which helpfully puts the new dictionary in the right place within ‘Dictionary’.

Once you’ve got the dictionary you want downloaded (see below for some links to get you started), you’re ready to see the screencast on how to add it, and get the very most from Dictionary.app on your Mac:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Additionally, here are some useful links (to free resources) to get you started in your search for an extra dictionary:

A German-to-English dictionary in the form of a plug-in, based on dict.cc site’s dictionary.
A medical terminology dictionary in the form of a “.dictionary” folder.
The OpenThesaurus German Dictionary plugin.
The BeoLingus German-to-English dictionary plugin
The CEDICT Chinese-to-English dictionary which is based on the open-source CEDICT project, which is occasionally updated. This is version 1.2.
The very large English-to-Chinese dictionary pack which contains four dictionaries (three of which are Traditional Chinese; one of which uses ‘Simplified’ characters).
An English-to-Arabic dictionary plugin.

There are more free and shareware dictionaries for Dictionary.app online.

The idea plays to the strengths of the Mac, with it’s huge and detailed icons. In any Finder window the icon can go as large as 128 x 128 pixels (note that the 512 pixels size for icons is reserved only for in the ‘CoverFlow’ view, and only in Leopard), and most of the shelves require you set your icons as 128 x 128 (or, for two of the shelves, 64 x 64) so that the icons ‘sit’ exactly on the shelf, and the icon’s name appears on the thick part of the shelves, as you can see here:

Titles appear on edge of

Before I review all the shelves and give you this links, here’s a quick tutorial on how to set the shelves: right-click within a Finder window and select ‘Show view options’. A small options window appears. Under ‘Background:’ select ‘Picture’ and then pick the shelves image that you’ve downloaded. Lastly, you just need to adjust ‘Icon Size’ and ‘Grid Spacing’ so that it matches this:

Use these icons settings with most shelves

How awesome is that? So, here’s where you can snag all the shelves that individual designers have made so far; all of them are free. Hit the links to the artist’s page to download them:

1. Five very funky shelves with themed backgrounds which are: Dark Metal, Leather Brown, Starry Night, Cinema, and Blue. Looks great inside either ‘Applications’ or indeed any folder that has some customized icons. For 128×128 pixel-size icons.

2. Wooden Shelves with wooden panelling and spotlights that will look especially good for the ‘Applications’ folder. For 64×64 pixel-size icons.

3. Studio wood-and-metal shelves looks particularly gorgeous and was designed specifically for the ‘Movies’ folder so as your movies and TV shows will be appear to be arranged on your shelf. For 128×128 pixel-size icons.

4. Two “iShelf” versions in graphite or white are super smooth and can be used as a background inside any folder. The white version works best with colourful and high-contrast icons. For 128×128 pixel-size icons.

5. Dark 3D Shelves contrast a wooden shelf against a very dark background, with some perspective on the left-hand side to make it look as though the shelves are fixed to a wall. For 64×64 pixel-size icons.

Those five links give you 12 great shelves to use within Finder on your Mac, created by excellent designers from all over the world, who offer them up for free for the pleasure-of-use of fellow Mac users. Enjoy!