Fireworks: resize image so shortest side is set, maintaining aspect ratio

[LeonardChallis]

This isn't the easiest problem to describe (never mind solve) which is why I'm not having much luck Googling it...

I have a folder full of photos that I wish to thumbnail. These photos vary vastly in dimensions; some are fat, some are thin, some tall, some short, etc, etc, etc. What I wish to do is create a batch script in Fireworks that will take an image and output a fairly decent thumbnail.

Let's say I want to make 100*100 thumbs. First I would resize the image so that the shortest side is 100; maintaining the aspect ratio would set the other side to whatever. I would then crop the image 100*100, maybe from the top, who knows -- that's not the issue here.

My issue is, how can I tell Fireworks to resize with the shortest side? I have tried several different ways, and created scripts using the history panel, but it always ends up with a load of images that have edges that are shorter than 100 pixels.

Any ideas?

[ralph.m]

There are other programs out there (some free) that do this resizing for you. Are you on Mac or PC?

[LeonardChallis]

I'm aware of this, but they tend to be horrible shareware type programs, and generally I'm after something cleaner/mroe professional.

I work on Ubuntu - but with a MacBook for personal and Windows for testing (installs of Fireworks/Photoshop on OSX and Windows), so there's plenty of choice in that matter.

I am almost tempted to just write a PHP script to do it for me - would be very simple - just thought that surely someone would have had this problem before, and a graphics tool such as Fireworks or Photoshop should surely allow you to do something like this?

[ralph.m]

a graphics tool such as Fireworks or Photoshop should surely allow you to do something like this?

I needed to do this too last year, and tried and failed to get anything useful out of Ps. It sort of has these features, but in practice, I found it to be very limited in what it could do and ultimately useless. (Can't speak for Fw, though.) I'd be interested too if anyone has found a way with Ps or Fw.