Lately I’ve been finding myself manually converting PNG files to JPEGs. It can get quite tedious and frankly, boring. I downloaded a couple of apps that could automate the process, but each of them had their quirks. They would either watermark the finished image or limit me to trying them out for a finite number of days. I had to resort to manually editing them using MS Paint, and then saving them as JPEG files. The quality was bad, all thanks to the disastrous MS Paint. So I set out to find a way to convert them using Photoshop. What I ended up was writing my own Action for Photoshop CS2.

I’m just illustrating how you can use Photoshop to convert PNG to JPEG in this how-to, but you could use it to convert any image format (including PSD) to JPEG. I’m going to save them using the “Save for Web” attribute because that’s what my purpose was to begin with.

1. Open the PNG file in Photoshop.
2. Go to Window -> Actions.
3. Click on the ‘Create New Action’ icon (found next to the trashcan icon). Give it any name and function key you want. It’s now recording your actions.
4. Go to File -> Save for Web. Choose whatever preset you want. Save the file.

The above action can be used in the future by activating the function key you defined. The image you were working on will be saved as a JPEG with the preset you chose, into the folder you chose. Saves a few clicks. But we’re not done with the batch conversion yet.

1. Go to File -> Automate -> Batch.
2. Choose your Action, the one that you saved previously.
3. Choose the source folder and the destination folder. Optionally set a naming scheme for all your batch files.
4. Wokay. You are now done.

All this could have been avoided if Apple had a bloody option to save the screenshots you take on an iPod Touch as JPEG instead of ridiculously sized PNG.

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