Converting all my files to .png?

[Candlelight]

I've scanned a whole heap of photos and saved them as TGAs to maintain maximum quality. However I'd like to put some in the cloud as a back up storage and wouldn't mind converting them to something a little less chunky.

Would .png be a decent alternative? It's lossless.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I'm just gonna come right out and ask this..

What IS .png? Other than always reading it "papua new guinea" in my head when I see it I know nothing. Actually that is knowing less than nothing since it's so incorrect.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I'm just gonna come right out and ask this..

What IS .png? Other than always reading it "papua new guinea" in my head when I see it I know nothing. Actually that is knowing less than nothing since it's so incorrect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics

 

[Pingfah]

PNG is most effective on files with blocks of solid colour like logos, and where you want to keep text as crisp as possible. I don't use it outside of websites generally personally where it's transparency quality comes in very handy in logos and suchlike, but it works well for pictures too.

In lossy formats, as far as quality/filesize goes the best option is still JPG in my opinion. For images if keeping 100% quality is the most important thing, PNG is a very good solution, it returns better results (smaller files) than other lossless like LZW compression which it was designed to replace, but most people can't tell the difference between a PNG and a high quality JPG.

 

[Stephen!]

Some photo hosting services such as Photobucket automatically resize pics, anyway if the file size is too large, so it might not really be an issue.

 

[RandyS]

PNG is most effective on files with blocks of solid colour like logos, and where you want to keep text as crisp as possible. I don't use it outside of websites generally personally where it's transparency quality comes in very handy in logos and suchlike, but it works well for pictures too.

In lossy formats, as far as quality/filesize goes the best option is still JPG in my opinion. For images if keeping 100% quality is the most important thing, PNG is a very good solution, it returns better results (smaller files) than other lossless like LZW compression which it was designed to replace, but most people can't tell the difference between a PNG and a high quality JPG.

I agree, JPEG is the best one to use. Whenever I convert pictures on my hard drive, JPEG is the default setting to save them. I used to like BitMaps because that was even higher quality, but they took up too much space on the computer.

 

[Lindley]

There's no point in storing anything as a bmp anymore. Lossless compression like png is exactly the same quality, and the bottleneck in opening compressed files is still the hard drive read, not the decompression processing.

 

[Candlelight]

In lossy formats, as far as quality/filesize goes the best option is still JPG in my opinion. For images if keeping 100% quality is the most important thing, PNG is a very good solution

I'd prefer to maintain maximum quality if only for the future if I want to get some printed (although I haven't done it in a couple of years, there's always making the photo albums of kids photos for grandma. ). My camera shoots natively JPEG anyway, I'm just trying to decide what to do with the ~400 scans I took of my old photos of me as a kid.

Cheers everyone, will probably use PNG.

 

[Naira]

Maybe Imagemagick will do the work?

 

[Methos]

I'm assuming you've got at least Photoshop installed if you're using .tiff files originally... so here's how I'd do it...

Open the .tiff file in Photoshop.

Go to Window -> Actions.

Click on the ‘Create New Action’ icon (found next to the trashcan icon). Give it any name and function key you want. It’s now recording your actions.

Go to File -> Save as.

Choose whatever extension you want. Save the file.

The above action can be used in the future by activating the function key you defined. The image you were working on will be saved as a .png with the preset you chose, into the folder you chose. Saves a few clicks. But we’re not done with the batch conversion yet.

Go to File -> Automate -> Batch.

Choose your Action, the one that you saved previously.

Choose the source folder and the destination folder. Optionally set a naming scheme for all your batch files.

All done

M

 

[Candlelight]

I'm assuming you've got at least Photoshop installed if you're using .tiff files originally... so here's how I'd do it...

Open the .tiff file in Photoshop.

Go to Window -> Actions.

Click on the ‘Create New Action’ icon (found next to the trashcan icon). Give it any name and function key you want. It’s now recording your actions.

Go to File -> Save as.

Choose whatever extension you want. Save the file.

The above action can be used in the future by activating the function key you defined. The image you were working on will be saved as a .png with the preset you chose, into the folder you chose. Saves a few clicks. But we’re not done with the batch conversion yet.

Go to File -> Automate -> Batch.

Choose your Action, the one that you saved previously.

Choose the source folder and the destination folder. Optionally set a naming scheme for all your batch files.

All done

M

I scanned at the photos in bulk on a flatbed scanner, so I sometimes have 3 or 4 images as a single ~40mb TGA file. I'm splitting them off individually and saving them as PNGs as I go.

Thanks for the tip anyway!

 

[rhubarbodendron]

what software do you use to split them off? I just scanned a bunch of old photo albums and would like to do the same. Atm I use PhotoScape. It's not bad at all but a trifle slow.

 

[Candlelight]

I'm doing it on the cheap; using Preview on my Mac.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

OIC. I use a MS OS, so that's no option for me.

 

[trekkiedane]

^There are threads with freeware and such in both the Science and Technology and the Web Sites/Design forums.

I've found IrfanView very useful, both as a viewer and as a converter.