How to convert to and from .jpg offline or online - quickly and easily.

Whether you need to convert one jpg or many, there are a number of useful tools you can use. There are bulk converters for people who work with large numbers of images, or you can learn a simple image manipulation program like MS Paint that nearly everyone already has installed in their computer - most likely, it is sitting in your computer already waiting for you to find it!.

You can also try an online converter such as the one at zamzar.com.

The Easiest Way:

Using Microsoft Paint. If you have MS Windows installed on your PC, it already comes with Microsoft Paint which has the ability to easily convert a BMP or GIF to a JPG. Click here to see how to convert a jpg using MS Paint.

The Best Way

If you want the highest quality method with the most control, the best way by far is to install a professional graphics package like Photoshop^TM or, if you do not want to spend any money, The Gimp. The Gimp is a great way to get started as it is free and can do almost anything that Photoshop can do. With the gimp, you simply open your file that you want to convert and simply change the extension name, that's it!

The Gimp

So for example, if you want to change image1.bmp to a JPG, you simply open it in the Gimp and save it as image1.jpg and it automatically gets converted. You will see a dialogue which asks you what quality you would like the image to be, and the default is 85%, which is sufficient for most web and email purposes - the only time you might wish to maintain a higher resolution is if you are producing photography or fine art pages, in which case you should experiment with the settings to determine the best resolution you can offer while conserving bandwidth.

The Online Way

Zamzar has a very neat service that allows you to convert all kinds of file types online. This is the fastest and easiest method if you are only going to do this

once in a while. Give it a try!

Note: jpg image compression does NOT support transparency, so gif or png images with a transparent background will have a white background when you convert them to a .jpg.

Converting a Bitmap to jpg

It is not enough to merely change the file extension (.bmp to .jpg) to convert a bitmap to a jpeg. Follow the instructions we provide or download a professional graphics package such as photoshop or the FREE Gimp.

Why Convert BMP to JPG?

Bitmaps are huge files and thus are very cumbersome to work with whether on a website or in emails. When you convert these images to a JPG or GIF, they are much smaller and when you use a robust program such as the GIMP, you can tweak the size and quality very easily.