Bulk conversion of RAW JPG

[raf_gti]

As well as my 'good' pictures I also like to keep the 'bad' pictures, unfortunately as they been shot in RAW they are taking up a whole lot of space.

Is there simple to use encoder which could do the process for me?

Bearing in mind this will be after I've PP'd the 'good' pictures so it can be as basic as a very basic thing.

[SamHH]

What make of camera is it and what program do you use for converting raw files at the moment? Can you not just select all the photos you want to convert and click 'convert' (or whatever the button is)?

[raf_gti]

SamHH said:

What make of camera is it and what program do you use for converting raw files at the moment? Can you not just select all the photos you want to convert and click 'convert' (or whatever the button is)?

It's a 400d and I mostly use the Canon supplied Zoombrowser. It's certainly not perfect but it's not so bad for doing PPing and converting the good ones.

The bulk encoder would be those left over ones which I don't really want to PP but still want to keep for future viewing.

[andy-xr]

Not sure what you're asking on this one, sorry! Are you wanting to free up space? Would ZIP/RAR'ing them be an option or just plain old burn to DVD? Probably something you should consider as part of a backup plan

[tinman0]

raf_gti said:

Is there simple to use encoder which could do the process for me?

If you're on a Mac, download ImageMagick and then run this in the folder where the images reside:


mogrify -format jpg *.cr2


Apparently.... (not tried it myself yet)

Edited by tinman0 on Wednesday 5th January 18:20

[Famous Graham]

Lightroom has a 30day trial, so you could import them all into that, then export them to jpg in one hit.

[pernod]

I use DXO Optics to do most of my conversions. It's not free, but bang for buck as far as image process go it's unbeatable.

It's one of the best raw converters available (I get better results from it than I do Lightroom).

I find it perfect for both doing my good shots as well as doing the 'bulk conversion' of all the rest (I do exactly the same process you are talking about). It is rather processor heavy however, so I normally leave it going overnight on bulk.

There is a free trial which will get you started.

[raf_gti]

andy-xr said:

Not sure what you're asking on this one, sorry! Are you wanting to free up space? Would ZIP/RAR'ing them be an option or just plain old burn to DVD? Probably something you should consider as part of a backup plan

Well at the moment if I take say 100 pictures in RAW that is generally 1Gb of data, I might be happy with 10% of them and decide to PP them, after being PP I will generally save them as JPG.

For the other 90% I still want to keep them but without the hassle of individually converting them and at 10Mb a time they are taking up a helluva lot of space.

Of course, I'm considering going back to JPG only anyway as I'm becoming a bit cynical about the benefits (to me) of continuing to use RAW.

[Ammo 7]

Picasa is free and converts all RAW files to .jpeg when you export them.

[andy-xr]

raf_gti said:

andy-xr said:

Not sure what you're asking on this one, sorry! Are you wanting to free up space? Would ZIP/RAR'ing them be an option or just plain old burn to DVD? Probably something you should consider as part of a backup plan

Well at the moment if I take say 100 pictures in RAW that is generally 1Gb of data, I might be happy with 10% of them and decide to PP them, after being PP I will generally save them as JPG.

For the other 90% I still want to keep them but without the hassle of individually converting them and at 10Mb a time they are taking up a helluva lot of space.

Of course, I'm considering going back to JPG only anyway as I'm becoming a bit cynical about the benefits (to me) of continuing to use RAW.

Gotcha

RAW vs JPEG is probably something for another thread, so how about using something like Irfanview to batch convert out the ones you have so far?

[SamHH]

raf_gti said:

SamHH said:

What make of camera is it and what program do you use for converting raw files at the moment? Can you not just select all the photos you want to convert and click 'convert' (or whatever the button is)?

It's a 400d and I mostly use the Canon supplied Zoombrowser. It's certainly not perfect but it's not so bad for doing PPing and converting the good ones.

The bulk encoder would be those left over ones which I don't really want to PP but still want to keep for future viewing.

So you're using Digital Photo Professional (the program that comes with the camera) to convert the raw format photos that you have made changes to? Why can't you use the same program to convert the photos that you haven't made changes to?

Edited by SamHH on Wednesday 5th January 18:41

[raf_gti]

SamHH said:

raf_gti said:

SamHH said:

What make of camera is it and what program do you use for converting raw files at the moment? Can you not just select all the photos you want to convert and click 'convert' (or whatever the button is)?

It's a 400d and I mostly use the Canon supplied Zoombrowser. It's certainly not perfect but it's not so bad for doing PPing and converting the good ones.

The bulk encoder would be those left over ones which I don't really want to PP but still want to keep for future viewing.

So you're using Digital Photo Professional (the program that comes with the camera) to convert the raw format photos that you have made changes to? Why can't you use the same program to convert the photos that you haven't made changes to?

Edited by SamHH on Wednesday 5th January 18:41

Cos I'm an awkward bugger

Was thinking of a way to keep the good & bad separate, as I shoot a lot more bad than good my process is a bit of a mess. TBH I really need to streamline the way I do my entire PPing.

[SamHH]

If you want to keep the 'bad' separate from the 'good', how about selecting all the 'bad' photos in Digital Photo Professional and dragging them to a different folder? Using two different programs for 'bad' and 'good' photos sounds like an unnecessary complication to me.

Anyway, in answer to your original question, Digital Photo Professional will do batch conversion of raw files.

[cirks]

If you want something very quick and easy....
http://mtapesdesign.com/instant-jpeg-from-raw-util...
When I first heard about it, it got rave reviews

[LongQ]

cirks said:

If you want something very quick and easy....
http://mtapesdesign.com/instant-jpeg-from-raw-util...
When I first heard about it, it got rave reviews

This is a great utility for the specific purpose described in the User Guide - extracting the native size (or smaller) jpg embedded in a RAW file by the camera when the shot is taken. That jpg is the file displayed when you review a RAW file on the camera screen and is created using whatever internal settings you have set in the camera for jpg processing when the picture was taken.

Bear in mind that in most cases these are not very high resolution files - they don't need to be. You can't do a lot with them (effectively) in terms of later editing should you ever want to.

Batch converting via DPP, especially if you have not set it much of an editing task, should be quite swft and would allow you to produce jpg files smaller than the RAW file but still potentially usable should you ever change your mind and feel the need to do something with a few of them. You can can set the output dimensions you want to save to.

Edited by LongQ on Thursday 6th January 02:08

Edited by LongQ on Thursday 6th January 13:06

[cirks]

LongQ said:

lots of good stuff

apologies I didn't make it clear about what the utility does in my original post