Image conversion can be done in many ways, and the conversion of the formats also changes the quality of the image. The most commonly used image formats are the jpg, bmp, png and gif formats. For Windows owners, the easiest way of doing so is the Microsoft Paint default program which gives an option to saving the image into different formats. For Mac, there is no such default program but you can download the free 3rd party program called Paintbrush that helps in the image format conversion. Adobe photoshop is always one of the best when it comes to anything with image editing, but for a format conversion, you don’t need to spend time using such a large tool.
Table of Contents –
Image Formats Abbreviations
Easy Image Conversion options
Online image converters
Image format converters for Windows
Image format converters for Mac
Important Image File Formats
Here are the different most important image formats –
Easy Image Conversion Options
Microsoft Paint – This is one of the easiest ways, where you just need to specify the file type while saving the image.
Just open the Microsoft paint that is available through the Accessories in the start menu. Then open the image file you want to convert the format for, and go to the top Menu > Save As, where you would get the different image formats like jpeg, gif, png, bmp etc.
Zamzar file converter – This is one of the multiple type file converter, where different varieties of the image formats can be converted very easily online. Just go to Zamzar.com and there once you select the file you want to convert, the file type is recognized and you can then select from the shortened list. The different image formats through which you can convert are – jpg, bmp, gif, ico, pcx, pdf, png, ps, tga and thumbnail.
Free Online Image Converter from CoolUtils – This is another online converter tool for those who don’t have any offline option, which usually happens with the Mac users. The image converter tool not just helps in conversion of the image formats, but also helps in resizing the image, and rotate it. The various formats among which the image can be converted – JPEG, BMP, TIFF, GIF, ICO and PNG.
Other Online Image Converters
- Online Utility image converter tool – One of the best online image conversion tools where around 100 different image formats are recognized and converted to the other formats. The most important and frequently used formats for conversion are – bmp, png, gif, jpeg, eps, pcd, psd, tga etc.
- Online Batchphoto converter tool – This is another neat and simple online tool, which converts the image files to various formats but allows the uploading of JPG, TIF, PNG, PSD, BMP, GIF, JP2, PICT, JPC, PCX, and SGI formats. Convert, resize, crop, rotate, touch-up or apply effects on images with Image Espresso, the free online image converter & editor from Bits&Coffee.
- Online image converter tool – Multiple image files can be converted at once. The file formats that the output converted files can have are dds, bmp, gif, jpg, png, tga, tiff, eps, esr, mng, pcx and pdf. The tool not just converts the files, but also can change the image size, crop, adjust the brightness and contrast of the image.
- Go2convert image converter tool – This tool not just does the conversion of image formats, but also music files and documents. The images that are converted, can be of formats jpg, bmp, gif, tga, png etc.
- Picture Resize online image converter – The image converter can convert image of any size, and can convert multiple images at once. Apart from the image format conversion, the tool also helps change the color resolution of the graphics. You can select to have the images sized for particular screen sizes.
- Image optimizer by DynamicDrive – A pretty simple tool when someone wants to quickly edit a small image file of not larger than 300kb, and image formats none other than gif, jpg, or png.
- VectorMagic converter – It converts the bitmap images to vector art. Automatically convert bitmap images like JPEGs, GIFs and PNGs to the crisp, clean, scalable vector art of EPS, SVG, and PDF.
Image Conversion Softwares – Windows
- Total image converter – This is a complete image converter software for windows which converts images to other formats to make them suitable for uploading to the web and emailing. You can even crop, resize, rotate and add text to the images all within the tool. {Download Link} File size: 6MB
- Picture Resize Genius – This is a smaller and easy-to-use software for the image format conversion and editing. It doesn’t have many options, but it does what you want to. It works with Windows® 2000, XP, 2003 Server, Vista and Win7. {Download Link} File size: 1.8MB
- Convert various image formats to .ico format – Imagicon – This is a simple tool which does the job of converting the image formats into windows icons of 16 x 16, 32 x 32, 64 x 64, 128 x 128 pixels and works in Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Download from here.
Image Conversion Softwares – Mac
- NF Image Converter – This tiny utility for Mac OS helps convert the images among different file formats. At the same time, it also renames the files, and it also enables iconizing, image editing etc. {Download Link} File size: 189kb
- PerfX Image Converter – RGB to RGB color conversion with ICC profiles. Native file format supported by Mac OS X like TIFF, JPEG, RAW, etc. {Download Link} File size: 126kb
- Paintbrush – This is something that resembles the Paint software in windows, helping in all the image editing needs. It also supports and allows saving of the images in different image formats like .jpg, .png, .gif etc. Editing includes the zooming, cropping, brushes, adding text, making shapes etc. {Download Link}
Most important Image file formats
- JEPG – Called as Joint Photographic Experts Group, the JPEG is one of the most commonly used image formats, found through most of the digital camera captured pictures. The quality of image is compromised when compared to the other formats like bmp and png, and multiple editing of the jpg file can degrade the quality of the image further.
- PNG – Portable network graphics is the free, open-source file format which supports the truecolor with 16 million colors. The size of the png files are larger than the jpg files, even when the resolution of the pic is same. This image format is used in most of the websites and emails, where a perfect display of the graphics is needed.
- GIF – Graphics interchange format is one of the traditional file formats which supports a 8-bit palette, or 256 colors. It helps in saving the very simple images like the logos, cartoons etc. This file format is not suitable when multiple colors are used.
- The other commonly used image formats are BMP, RAW, TIFF, PCD, PICT, PSD etc.
If you know of any other good image conversion tools, softwares and online resources, do share them in comments. We would love to make the list bigger.
The complete Image format conversion guide