Every now and then I find myself in need of converting an image to another format, especially when the application I’m working with does not support the file format I have at hand. Recently I find myself needing to convert several webp formatted files, a format developed by Google as a replacement for PNG, JPEG and GIF. Unfortunately quite a few applications still do not support this new(er) format.
There are a bunch of tools out there that can do this for us, like Pixillion from NCH Software (free version available), or online services like CloudConvert. MacOS however already comes equipped with a suitable tool that can help us with that – and can even handle a batch – called “macOS Preview“.
In this article:
How to convert images, to different file formats, with Preview that comes with macOS – one at a time, or in batch.
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How can we optimize PNG images even MORE …?
You might have looked at some of the PNG optimization tools out there like PNGOUT, although great tools, they can’t quite keep up with JPEG compression when it comes to photographs and other more complex graphics – but you’d like fast loading webpages yet still want to use transparency which is something JPEG and GIF do not [properly] support.
Another trick that will nibble off quite a few bytes is “Posterization” – a function found in Adobe Photoshop and most other graphics programs.
In this article I’ll show you how to use it and how beneficial it can be.
In this article a quick and free trick to optimize PNGs on your Mac …
While developing and maintaining my website, I use several tools to optimize the size of my PNG image files.
So far I think that PNGOUT (for Windows see ardfry.com which also offers an Adobe Photoshop plugin) produces the best results. As a switcher between MacOS X and Windows I noticed the freely available PNGOUT port for MacOS … but unfortunately this is just a command line tool.
I started playing with the Automator included with MacOS X, dabbled with AppleScript and Shell scripts, but never got a really convenient and satisfying thing going … until I bumped into ImageOptim created by Kornel Lesinski.
