The main interface of the program is divided into a profile and photos section. The program uses conversion profiles to convert the photos and images that are loaded into it. About a dozen profiles are already available after installation ranging from converting photos to jpeg thumbnails, true color png images or black and white tiff images.

Each profile consists of a set of operations, a target image format, a folder where the converted images are saved and file name manipulations. The option to create new profiles and alter existing ones is a very powerful way of configuring photo converting operations that need to be processed regularly. All it actually takes to convert photos with a specific profile would be to load the photos, select the profile and hit the start button in the software.

The most powerful part are the operations that can be added to each profile. It is possible to add one or multiple operations to the profile which ranges from resizing and rotating images to adding watermarks, color effects or profiles, page filters or brightness and contrast changes.

The strength of this is the ability to use multiple image converting and manipulation operations. It is for example possible to reduce all loaded photos by 50%, add a watermark image to the lower left using alpha blend and remove meta tags if those are stored in the original photos.

The program comes with a preview option to preview the profiles before they are saved and used.

Image Converter Plus supports batch conversion of images that are loaded into the interface. It is actually possible to load images or folders containing images into the application. The photo tab will display all photos and images that have been loaded into the program. Each image conversion can be previewed individually before all images are converted using the settings of the selected profile.

Another interesting option for professional use is command line support so that the program can be used in batch files.

Verdict

Image Converter Plus is a very powerful image converter that supports lots of image formats and operations that can enhance, change and convert images into an output format the user wants it to be in. The use of profiles make the image conversions less time consuming after the first initial configuration.

Christmas Giveaway

We have seven licenses of this powerful image converter. Please let us know what you would like to use the program for for a chance to win one of the licenses.

Raju is giving away licenses for Codeweaver’s Crossover today. Make sure to check it out if you are a Mac or Linux user.

Nothing is worse than posting ascii art that the others already know and to avoid this dilemma users could turn to applications that can turn images into ascii art to create unique images.

Shot2Char is just one of the many applications that can do that. Only one image can be converted at a time and it has to be available in one of the supported image formats like jpg, gif or bmp.

The user can change some settings that define the outcome, for instance the font and font size or if the original colors should be kept or if the image should be converted to an black and white image. The chars that are used to create the image can be defined in that menu as well. The output format can also be selected. It can either be an image, html or text file.

Image 2 HTML is a software that can process any number of images and convert them directly into HTML files that can be posted on websites. The quality of the output is excellent, you can take a look at a small sample gallery here. The image is converted into a fully colored HTML file using chars defined by the user. This would probably make an excellent surprise for the misses if you convert an image showing the both of you with the chars Iloveyou or something similar.

Back to the tool. The background color, width, char size and char-set can be defined as well as some additional effects like mirroring the image or inverting it.

The settings invite to play with them to create different looking images. If you can come up with another use of an image 2 html converter let me know please. Maybe to prevent images from being blocked by a firewall or network restrictions.

Update: Image To HTML has been discontinued. Neither the website nor the software are available anymore on the Internet. Interested users can try an alternative service like Neil Fraser’s Image to HTML Converter to convert a web image into HTML.

Web image in this regard means that the image needs to be available on the Internet, as it is only possible to convert Internet images into HTML. The service has no uploading facilities to upload images from the computer to convert them to HTML. Use a free image host first if you need to convert a local image to HTML.

Supported features are to browse for files and folders or to drag and drop them into the program interface. The resizing options allow to change the resolution of each image by percentage or fixed width and a few preset dimensions can be selected to make them usable in iPhones, iPods or the PSP.

Other options that directly affect the resized image are the image quality and two checkboxes to maintain aspect ratio and preserve width and height by orientation.

Several output parameters can be defined as well. The output file format can be selected as well as the output folder and the filename of the new files. Several variations are available for that purpose, for example adding day,month and year information to the filename.

Several optional parameters are available that can rotate the images or apply a black and white or negative filter.