Best tool to convert TIFF to JPEG?

[paul.deitch]

I have a bit of a project going. I bought a Digidia 5000 off Ebay to scan in my F-I-Ls slides and negatives.
So far I have scanned in 12,500+ slides and it looks like there are about 6000 negatives still to go.

I have scanned them into TIFF format for archive/edit, written some VB using EXIFtool to add the IPTC data that I have and now I want to resize them to JPEG for distribution across the family.

Apart from using a higher quality export setting, are there any conversion programs (I already have three) which give significantly better quality than others with TIFF to JPEG conversion? It would be a shame to make all that effort and then not have good output.

Oh and any recommended gallery viewer type programs out there. I have experimented with Piwigo as a portable website gallery viewer on a USB stick, but even that might be too challenging for some of my relatives.

[Simpo Two]

Seems to me you want two things - best quality JPGs (ie same pixel dimensions and minimum compression, AND something to resize them (both px and Kb) for distribution presumably via web or e-mail.

I'd use Photoshop and set up an 'action' (including resharpening for small versions)- but there may be better ways to do it. Either way it's going to have to chew a lot of data!

[paul.deitch]

Thanks! Being partially colour blind and not an artist, how much "sharpening" (what ever that means) should I use?

[alock]

I've used ImageMagick for batch processing before. Very fast and high quality.
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php

[markmullen]

In Capture One you can have multiple output recipes, eg you could export a 1000px longest edge jpeg and a full size jpeg at the same time. You could also add metadata at the same time.

You can get a fully functioning free trial, might be worth a try.

[Simpo Two]

paul.deitch said:

Thanks! Being partially colour blind and not an artist, how much "sharpening" (what ever that means) should I use?

It's more technical that artisitic. As you reduce a digital image it needs artificial 'sharpening' to remain looking sharp. The extent depends on how much you reduce it - the smaller it is, the more it needs - adjust the first one by eye (too much will make edges go funny), then apply that to all.

You need something that will allow you to do it in batches - ie load 100 in, set destination folder, hit 'go' and wait while they cook.