Batch resize and convert

[percydaman]

We recently purchased a slew of texture libraries, that are just way too large a resolution to be used, besides being pngs. I need to find a way to batch resize them by half and convert to jpegs. Anyone know of a program that could do an entire directory? They are all different aspect ratios. Not having much luck with photoshop.

[joconnell]

Try irfanview or xnview - both are image viewers with batch rename and convert - xnview has a nicer interface and better support for movies too. All free.

[Morbid Angel]

percy... photoshop is the best for this kind of thing. Are you familiar with actions?
All you need to do is to create an action which will say: open a file, resize it by dots per inch (which is percentage) and then save to disk in another format.
Then go File/Batch/ execute batch.

Another thing I would suggest is good old acdsee. Does everything quite well too.

[percydaman]

ya i hate photoshops batch program. how do i tell it to open only one at a time? these images are as high as 60 megs apiece. Ill look into the other programs, thanks.

[Morbid Angel]

ummmm I think it only opens one at a time.
What you need to do is record an action. But in that action you must do the following:
Have the image already open (one of them) and you must not record the open comand. Just record the operation, like resize, save as, close.
Then run it in batch. Its designed to process all images in specified folder.
So try that.

[Dynedain]

One thing that sucks though is that if you don't use the save for web command (instead of save as) Photoshop writes a bunch of useless crap into the JPEG file, making the filesize much larger than it should be.

And if you use the Save For Web in an action, you usually end up with the action simply re-saving over the same file as it batch runs through a folder instead of saving a new file for each image that it manipulates.

[CCS]

I don't get the problem with PS either.
As for the overwriting issue... that's why you specify a different target folder.

When you're done, delete the original files if you desire.

[tom182]

I too have that issue with those well know (German made ) maps, the annoying thing is that the action has to use a uniform pecentage scale transform rather than defining the image size by pixels - as the maps have different aspect ratios to eachother. This means you are going to have to guesstimate your sizes based on one of the images. Actions are the way to go.

Tom

[instinct]

a ps droplet does the trick for me pretty well...also using irfanview that works fine too.

Regards,
Thorsten

[ene.xis]

i do it all the time with PS...

its a time saver!

[Neilg]

I know the packs you mean (I was amazed when I saw the quality!) I just do them one by one depending on the job, their pdf's are pretty clear on how they look.

The thing Ive found with them is that while they may be able to cover a huge area, once shrunk down uniformly they loose a lot of close up detail. Depending on the scene you may want to just crop them.

[studioDIM]

Max can also be scripted to handle format and size conversion.
It's fairly quick and reliable, as well, and handles of course any format max has a reader/writer for (ldr/hdr images).

Lele

[percydaman]

thanks for the help. IRFanview did the job and couldn't have been easier.

[flipside]

I also use acdsee, it's the best program ever, and much much quicker than PS for this kind of tasks. But their jpg algorithm isn't that good as that from photoshop.

What dynedain says about PS save for web is true, it doesn't overwrite your originals, it overwrites the first converted file each time.

[Dynedain]

As for the overwriting issue... that's why you specify a different target folder.

When you're done, delete the original files if you desire.

What I mean is that if you use the Save For Web feature, then PS will keep overwriting the same file over and over. So if you batch a folder of images, it will convert them all, but the end result will be that you only have the last image converted.

If you don't use Save For Web, PS writes about 30-40k worth of useless headers and crap to the file.