Convert image files without leaving Explorer

Load a web browser, click in the address line once and then type www.xnview.com and press Return. When the website loads, click the English icon and then at the next screen, click the Shell Extension link (this will ensure we’re downloading the correct ‘bit’ of the Xnview suite). At the next screen, choose the Shell Extension section and click on the link to the first server there. If Windows displays a security warning, ignore it and click the Save button. At the next dialogue box, choose a location for the file and click Save again.

Double-click the new icon on the Windows Desktop to install the shell extension, agreeing to all of the defaults and accepting the licence agreement. Once the program has finished installing, there is no obvious sign of it – that’s because of the way it integrates with Windows Explorer. To see Xnview, open the My Pictures folder and then open the Sample Pictures folder inside that. Right-click on any picture and this menu appears. Notice all the extra features in the middle, including a thumbnail of the selected photograph.

For quick, off-the-cuff conversions between the most common types of image file, Xnview is hard to beat. Just select the picture, right-click on it, run down the menu to the Convert into option and then choose a file type from the seven listed there. In this example we’re converting a JPEG into a TIFF file. The resulting conversion will be stored in the same folder as the original, using the same name – only the extension will indicate that it’s been changed from ‘picture.jpg’ to ‘picture.tif’.

XnView has other handy options. Highlight more than one picture and repeat Step 3 and it will convert them all in a single pass. Alternatively, for more control, right-click a picture and choose Convert from the pop-up menu. The subsequent dialogue box includes lots of options for organising how conversions are made. Use the dropdown menu to change the file type, alter the dimensions using the Resize option and choose where to store the conversions by picking an Output folder. Here we are creating a new folder for our converted pictures.

To change the way Xnview carries out other tasks, right-click on a picture and then choose Options from the menu. From here it’s possible to choose which of the menu items are displayed (‘Set wallpaper’, for example, could be considered redundant as Windows already includes something similar) as well as altering other important settings: the standard menu is a bit long so we’re going to choose All from the Submenu option. From now on, Xnview will appear in its own submenu, rather than just being integrated into the main pop-up menu.

There is one final thing to try. Photographers are always interested in making sure their photographs are properly tagged and one of the most enduring ways of doing this is the IPTC system (this stands for the International Press Telecommunications Council). Right-click on a photograph and then choose IPTC edit from the pop-up menu. When the dialogue box appears, it’s possible to add all sorts of additional information about the picture and who took it – click Write to have this information saved with the photograph.