Mass Conversion

If you have an extensive collection of photos, you will hardly want to edit each photo individually. Converseen lets you rotate, scale, and convert a large number of images in a single run

- DANIEL TIBI

After you have edited a collection of vacation pics or snapshots from a party, you may want to scale them for emailing. This doesn’t seem like a big deal at first, but if you have to edit each image individually for an entire series of photos, this monotonous task can consume a huge amount of time. The remedy is basically ImageMagick [1], which batch processes files, but can only be controlled using shell commands.

If you feel more comfortable with a graphical user interface, it is worth taking a look at Converseen [2], which is based on ImageMagick. For the install [3], you have a choice between an AppImage and Flatpak or Snap packages across various distributions. Some distributions also let you pick up Converseen via the package manager, and the source code [4] is available on GitHub if you prefer to build the tool yourself.

After setting up the program, launch by selecting the entry in the desktop menu, or type the converseen command in the shell.

The main window of the application is divided into two areas. On the right you see a (initially empty) list of all the images to be processed. You can add new files either via the File | Add images menu or by pressing the matching button in the toolbar. When you click on one of the entries, Converseen displays a preview in the sidebar on the left, along with information about the file type, file size, image size, and resolution (Figure 1). Checking an entry selects individual images to be edited, while Edit | Select all or the Check all button in the toolbar lets you select all entries.

Processing PDF files