From What is the difference between TIFF, GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, and a BMP file?
BMP - Bitmap. This was probably the first type of digital image format that I can remember. Every picture on a computer seemed those days to be a BMP. In Windows XP the Paint program saves its images automatically in BMP. However, in Windows Vista and later images are now saved to JPEG. BMP is the basis platform for many other file types.
JPG / JPEG - (Joint Photographic Experts Group) Jpeg format is used for color photographs, or any pictures with many blends or gradients. It is not good with sharp edges and tends to blur them a bit unless stored at high quality. This format became popular with the invention of the digital camera. Most, if not all, digital cameras download photos to your computer as a Jpeg file. Obviously the digital camera manufacturers see the value in high quality images that ultimately take up less space.
GIF - (Graphics Interchange Format) Gif format is best used for text, line drawings, screenshots, cartoons, and animations. Gif is limited to a total number of 256 colors or less, so Gif images are relatively small. It is commonly used for fast loading web pages. It also makes a great banner or logo for your web-page. Animated pictures can also be saved in GIF format as a sequence of static images. For example, a flashing banner would be saved as a Gif file.
PNG - (Portable Networks Graphic) This lossless formats is one of the best image formats. It was not always compatible with all web browsers or image software, but nowadays it is the best image format to use for website. I use .png for logos and screenshots. One of its most astonishing abilities is being able
to compress images losslessly (without loss of pixels), although the final
compressed size varies between image editors.
TIFF - (Tagged Image File Format) This file format has not been updated since 1992 and is now owned by Adobe. It can store an image and data (tags) in the one file. TIFF can be compressed, but it is rather
its ability to store image data in a lossless format that makes a TIFF file a useful image archive, because unlike standard JPEG files, a TIFF file using lossless compression (or none) may be edited and re-saved without losing image quality.
This file is commonly used for scanning, faxing, word processing, and so on. It is no longer a common file format to use with your digital photos, as jpeg is great quality and takes up less space.
ImageMagick reads but doesn't write DDS. And of course it reads and writes PNG.
From identify -list format:
...
DDS* DDS r-- Microsoft DirectDraw Surface
...
PNG* PNG rw- Portable Network Graphics (libpng 1.2.37)
...
To convert a file (leaving the original intact):
convert test.dds test.png
To convert a directory full:
for file in *.dds
do
convert "$file" "$(basename "$file" .dds).png"
done
Best Answer
No need for any additional tools. OS X has
sips, which can convert images to (almost) any format.For example, to convert every
.gifto.jpeg, putting them into a folder calledjpegs:Or, to recursively convert them using
find, which will place a JPEG file with the same name as the GIF next to it.