How to batch change GIF to JPEG files?

Question

My workflow involves doing most of my processing in LR6 followed by opening the file into PS6, completing the work, then saving as a TIF file, and finally creating a JPEG from the TIFF. Somehow following a power outage on my Save for Web step I unknowingly began saving as GIF files rather than JPEGs. I then found that although the files in Explorer were in the correct folders I could not bring them up in LR. It is only now after processing a huge number of GIF images that I figured out the error. Is there a mechanism to change an image from GIF to JPEG and, more importantly, is there a way to batch them and do many at once as there are too many images to go one by one.

rayek.elfin · Accepted Answer

Sure, you can use the Image Processor in Photoshop to do this for you.

Process a batch of Photoshop files

TIFF is a non-lossy format, while JPEG is a lossy format. This means that you will lose some quality in JPEG no matter what you do (the nature of the beast). Best you save your JPEGs at a quality of 10 or higher if you require very high quality JPG files. But I would test a bunch of files with various quality settings first, and then decide.

rayek.elfin · Answer

Yes, it is possible to batch process GIF images to JPEG, but I would recommend against such a conversion, for one simple reason: GIF supports only up to 256 colours.

This means that all your photos have been converted to low-colour images, and the quality suffers quite dramatically due to heavy dithering (depends a bit on the image, though: a blue sky isn't that terrible in GIF). And that dithering won't convert well at all to JPEG (GIF and JPEG compression algorithm are kinda opposites).

It would be much preferable to convert the original TIFF images to JPEGs.

My advice is to avoid converting your existing GIF to JPEG at all means if possible - it will degrade the quality drastically - and instead convert the full-colour TIFF files instead.

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