ImageMagick and batch files

I borrowed a film scanner this week – and I’ve been scanning old (and crappy quality) APS films to TIFF files. The results are pretty good – considering the limitations of APS.

Here’s the stunning Taj Mahal, Agra, India taken in August 2001.

I needed to convert around 2000 TIFF files to something that was useful on the photo album – JPEG. I decided on ImageMagick – it’s open source, free and really comprehensive.

I love ImageMagick – it’s a core part of the image resizing and conversion for my online photo albums.

I wrote a one line batch file for Windows to do the conversion:

for %%f in (*.tif) do c:progra~1imagem~1.7-qconvert %%f %%~nf.jpg

Nice use of the macro – the %%~nf will strip the filename out of the full filename %%f. Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 2003 server allow this – HELP FOR gives the full detail; it’s buried quite deep.