Question about resizing pictures for website

[markw10]

I've started populating my store heavily and in general when I put a picture in my ad I don't choose a large picture but choose a small picture that is shown in the actual catalog in my store when someone sees it for example on a page of featured items or in one of my store categories. Then I try to upload a medium picture that someone sees when they click on the actual item itself.
To make my website look well organized I try my best to have all of the smaller picture be the same size, approximately 100 x 80 and the medium pictures aren't as important but I try to have them around 200 x 250 or slightly larger. In some cases I may use a larger picture as a pop-up image and would use approximately 300 x 400
What I'm wondering is when I get stock photos for items I try to get them close in size but this isn't always the case. Is there an easy way to resize a picture to a custom size that I choose? If I do this would there be any problems with the quality such as a picture looking stretching or the opposite?
What is the best software to use for this? Currently I have the Adobe Creative Suite 3 which includes PhotoShop, Illustrator, and Fireworks. I use primarily Mac OS X in the office but we also have access to an older Windows XP machine but I prefer Mac software. I haven't been able to figure out how to do this with Adobe Photoshop and although I know it may be possible I don't know how hard it is. I'd really be interested in an easy program that would simplly resize to a size I input. This would be helpful since I will be resizing a large number of pictures.

[typhus]

I had a quick look at this a while back. I found the easiest method to be to record an action (macro) in PS3. I only created a simple action using 'trim' and 'canvas resize'. Then goto batch processing and select the action you just recorded.

There's probably a better way of doing this, but as I said I only had a quick look into it. Try this method and see if it helps, if not remember to post back here the method you used.

J.

[met00]

Why not let the server do all the work for you?

I use the largest picture I can get from the manufacturer.
Then I have imagemagic mod installed in my store.

The nice part is that it cache's the smaller images after they are displayed the first time reducing load. You can also add watermarks (use png if you want this to work 100&#37 that are added to the image on the fly. Final good note is that it makes it MUCH harder for others to steal images....

Thumbnail:
http://www.your---store.com/imagemag...00&h=150&page=
Product Info:
http://www.your---store.com/imagemag...page=prod_info

[the click to enlarge I do not run through imagmagic so it is stealable, but that is going to be changing by September - on the other hand, it's not screen scrapeable since I never put the actual image name up anywhere ]