Convert Multiple File Types in Batches

In this video, I’m going to show you how you can change the file type of an image using the Preview app. Actually, we’re going to look at how you can do this in batches. Let’s see how we can change the file types of multiple files using the Preview app on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

So I have this folder here and I have a number of different files in here. These are PNGs. These are pings. Now what I want to do is convert these into JPEG. How can I convert multiple files into JPEGs? Well, we can do this with the Preview app. The first thing we need to do is we need to open up all of our different files that we want to convert in the Preview app. Now they do have to be of the same type. In other words, I can’t convert PNGs and TIFF files at the same time, as an example. What I need to do is convert my PNG files first, and then the other file types such as TIFFs at another time. So we have to do this in batches, if you have mixed file types. So these are all PNGs. So I’m pretty good here.

Now, what I need to do is I need to open these up in the Preview app. So now I just select them all, and I just double-click on them. When I double click on it, it’s going to open up in the Preview app. I have the Preview app set to open a PNG files by default. So I double click on it, and now we can see it opened up in Preview here.

The next thing we need to do is we need to select all of the files, all of the different images in our thumbnail view. If you do not see your thumbnail view here, what you’ll need to do is click the sidebar button here to show the thumbnails. Right now, I only have one file here selected. I need to select all of them because I want to convert all of them. So how do I do that? Well, I just go up under Edit and then we go to Select All.

So now I’ve opened up my images in the Preview app. I’ve selected them in the Preview app. The next thing is to convert them. How do we convert them? We export. I go up under File, and then we go to Export Selected Images. This is why I needed to select all the images, because it’s going to export anything that I have selected. So now I select this.

We have a window that opens up and from here, I need to make sure that I click on Options. When I click on Options, I’m able to set what I want to convert them to. So right now, what this is going to do is it’s going to convert these PNG files into JPEGs. If I wanted to convert them into a different file type, I just select this and I select the file type.

I’m going to leave it at JPEG. It’s going to save them to my desktop. So now I just click on, Choose here, and it’s exporting those three files as JPEG. So the original files were PNGs. If we look over to the right on my desktop, we can see that now they are JPEGs. Now it does export them out. It doesn’t replace them. If I go over to my original folder here, I still have my PNGs. So these are in my PNG folder, while I exported these out to my Desktop folder.

Let’s do that again. This time we’re going to use TIFF files. This is another file format. So I’m going to close out of here. Let’s just quit out of Preview actually. I’m going to go back over to my folder here. I have TIFFs. Now by default, these images are set up to open up in Acorn. Acorn is like Photoshop.

So if I were to double-click on any one of these, so let’s go ahead and double click on Disney here, it’s going to open up in Acorn here. I need to open them up in Preview. So how do I do that being that they’re set up to open up in Acorn? Well, let’s quit out of here. What I need to do is just select them all, just like I did with my PNGs. So I just select them all. And now what I do is I hold down the control key. And when I click, I get a menu that pops up. And from here, what I’m able to do is set what I want to open it with. By default, it says acorn. That’s not what I want. I’m going to use Preview to convert all these in a batch. So now I just go down to Preview here. It opens up those three images in the Preview app, and we can see them and our thumbnail.

What’s my next step? I select all of my thumbnails. So now I just go up under Edit and we go to Select All. Now, what do I do? I go up under File and I Export my Selected Images. From here, I make sure that I click on Options, and when I click on Options, I’m able to set what I want to convert them to. So now these would be converted to JPEGs as well. It would save them to the Desktop. I click on Choose and it’s going to convert those.

So that’s how we can convert multiple files using the Preview app. The first thing we need to do is open up all of the files in the Preview app. They do have to be of the same file type. Once you open them up in the Preview app, you select all of the thumbnails in the sidebar. Once all the thumbnails are selected, you just go up under File and you Export your Selected Images. Make sure you click on Options to select what you want to export with them. As in my case, I exported them out as JPEGs.

So that’s how you can export multiple files or multiple images using the Preview app on the Mac.