Trying To Find Freeware

[penzman]

I've searched the net, tried a few but the freeware I've found ended up being trial versions after 100 conversions.

I have loads of Hi-res JPGs that I need to convert to GIFs. I can do it manually in Photoshop but this takes forever and I ll have many more to convert later on. Don't seem to be able to batch/convert in photoshop as well.

I need compression and retain image quality. GIF ok? Any other formats you'd recommend that are now supported by most browsers?

Thanks,

Penzman

[donx]

IrfanView v3.97 or greater should do this. It has a batch conversion/rename feature from the File menu. It shows GIF as a selectable output format. I use this program to batch convert/rename my 5 megapixel JPG files to JPG files that are small enough to use as email attachments. You can get it from download.com, I believe.

[singa-traz]

http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php

[Crossy]

Hi Penz.

What do you want to do with your .gif files??

gif is a fairly old format and will actually give you bigger files than jpeg

If you want to use for the web stick to jpegs, scale them to a decent size (say 800*600) and use a medium compression, you should get files around 150k with acceptable quality.

Have a look at Winjpeg to do your batch conversion and resizing. It's shareware and although fairly old it's pretty quick, no bells and whistles.

Edited July 20, 2005 by Crossy

[spog]

Gif is very good for line drawings and pictures with hard edges. Jpeg is better for pictures of people and places

ACDSEE has an excellent batch convertor and I think the older versions are freeware

Microsoft has a neat little 'powertoy' called 'image resizer' which allows you to right click and convert a bunch of files into smaller jpegs

[Crossy]

I'd not thought about ACDSee

Version 4 works well and does batch conversion and resizing.

[Firefoxx]

If you have photoshop, why not use the "automate" command in the file menu?

If you want good file size and image quality, JPGs are the way to go. GIFs are small, but they have a maximum of 256 colors (compared to 16 million in JPGs). The size of JPG files can be reduced by reducing their quality index when saving, 50% quality will give you very small file sizes with very usable images.

Instructions to do this in Photoshop:

Open any image

Go to the "Actions" Palette

Click on the "Create New Action" button on the bottom

Give it a name, like "JPG small file"

Click on RECORD

Go to File, Save As, and pick a directory you want to save your files in

Choose JPEG as the format, click on Save

In the dialog box, pick a compression level (in the 5, medium is fine, choose less if you want smaller files)

Click OK

Go back to the Actions Palette, and click on the "stop" button

Now, to automate

Go to File, Automate, Batch

Choose the "Action" to be the one you named (like "JPG small file")

"Source" should be folder, click on "Choose" to pick the folder you want to convert

"Destination" should be "Save and Close"

Click on "OK" to start.

All the files will be converted and saved to the directory you chose in the first step.

Edited July 20, 2005 by penzman

[penzman]

Thanks for all the replies.

I've tried the photoshop automation, works great! (added "record" to your instructions) I like this one particularly since I always work with PS for pics.

The only thing is, with most of what I ve tried, there is only one destination folder available. Before editing, my images are already sorted into many subfolders. That's the main thing I forgot to mention, I need to grab the main and subfolders, resize, and resend the edited pics back to their original subfolder. Up to now, all the pics all end up in the main folder.

Still testing your suggestions,

Thanks