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This is a little tangential, but your post reminded me that I've struggled with converting images at work because our vpn blocks a lot of those file conversatio
by 63 3y ago
This is a little tangential, but your post reminded me that I've struggled with converting images at work because our vpn blocks a lot of those file conversation sites (presumably for good reason, but I'm not privy). Converting common file formats seems like such a common use case that I really feel like there should be a tool built into modern operating systems for it. It seems like an obvious add to me, but then again the Windows search functionality barely works so I'm not sure they're incentived to actually help their users right now.
- asynchronous 3y agoEspecially since almost all conversions can be done in the browser with JavaScript libraries now.
- ryandrake 3y agoA browser + JavaScript seems like a pretty heavy lift to do something as trivial as converting an image from one format to another. ImageMagick is simple, fast, and available for just about every system imaginable.
- JoshTriplett 3y agoGrab a copy of netpbm or GraphicsMagick that's compiled for Windows. Or, grab a free image editor (https://www.getpaint.net/ https://www.getpaint.net/ is popular for Windows), open in one format, save in the other.
- JohnFen 3y agoThis. I honestly don't understand why people use online image converters when there are high-quality OSS programs that will do the job locally. I'll bet that the majority of the online converters are using these programs to do the actual conversion anyway.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- andrei_says_ 3y agoTinypng consistently creates better looking jpg and ping files than the Photoshop’s exporting algorithm- at the same filesize. I have optimage and imageoptim on MacOS too and they are good enough at this point.
- wruza 3y agohttps://www.google.com/search?q=convert+jpg+to+png https://www.google.com/search?q=convert+jpg+to+png That’s why. And also because sometimes it just works. I’ve done some packet-level work recently and wanted to decode text. The tools I’ve used were some online converters, not iconv or base64. Because experimenting with their modes adds mental overhead even if I more or less can use them without man. Choosing from-to and pasting text into a textbox takes no brain capacity. 25+ years ago, when internet wasn’t very accessible, there were multiple simple windows apps to do small things like this. Now they are online, but open source and new apps world in general never figured out that users still need it - simple, discoverable, easy to use tools. I’m not gonna scroll through pages of magick options and (in case it just works based on .ext, which I also should re-figure out from the lack of such option) try to remember if there’s -i and -o required for input and output.
- CamJN 3y agoMacOS can convert between pretty much any reasonable combination of formats using its automation/shortcuts framework. RTF→HTML→word or HEIC→jpg→png, whatever.
- reaperducer 3y agoConverting common file formats seems like such a common use case that I really feel like there should be a tool built into modern operating systems for it. It is in modern operating systems. Maybe not Windows, but modern operating systems like macOS have it built in. You can do it a number of ways, including using Automator, Preview, or even access it from the Finder. I did it about 30 times today. Select file > right click > Quick Service > Convert
- porridgeraisin 3y agoThe most trivial solution is to open it in paint and save as -> destination format. The most comprehensive solution is to download imagemagick.