Spesoft Free Image Converter

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on March 21, 2011

Spesoft Free Image Converter is the sort of tool you need when you come across an image file you can't open. It can convert images and even text between more than 75 file types, singly or in batches. It also handles PDFs and other vector files, resizes and rotates images, applies effects, cleans up images, and reduces PNGs without reducing image quality. It can convert about 10,000 files at once, too, so it's robust enough to handle large archives. It even handles OCR. Anything else? You bet: it's free.

Spesoft uses a wizard-based interface instead of a traditional GUI. The software opens with a simple dialog sporting a drop-down list that let us choose to convert a single file, the files in a folder, or the files in a folder and all subfolders; or create an RSS feed from images in a folder. We opted to convert a single file and chose a JPEG from our Pictures Library via the program's browser. Clicking Next advanced the dialog screen to the output format page. Here we could choose from an extensive list of formats, many of which had associated controls such as image quality selections. We chose PDF as an output format and moved on to the image transformation and output quality settings, chose an output folder, and clicked Start when the program presented its summary of our proposed actions. A progress bar and timer tracked our job, displaying a summary log when the process finished. Opening our new file showed it to be an excellent PDF reproduction of the large-format color original. However, it was with batch processing that Spesoft Free Image Converter's wizard-based method proved most effective. Dabblers may wish for a more traditional display-based interface, but Spesoft's wizard let us quickly set exactly the files, parameters, and conditions we wanted, with no mistakes, and then processed the lot automatically. The RSS tool proved an easy way to load a file full of pictures to a Web site, with the same easy wizard-based process as the image conversion tool.

Spesoft Free Image Converter is somewhat different from the other batch image converters we've tried. It's no lightweight, despite its small and speedy user interface, but it's all heft, not bloat: this tool is focused on converting an amazing range of image files, not on its skin.

 

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Publisher's Description

From Spesoft:

Spesoft image converter is a free, easy to use, yet substantial utility for batch image conversion. Convert between over 75 different image formats. Including vector formats such as EPS and PDF. Transform images with options for resizing, cropping, flipping and rotation. Apply effects. Sharpen, Blur, Contrast. Adjust Brightness, Hue and Saturation. Simple wizard style interface. Convert 10,000's of images or just one in a few clicks. Crush your PNG images to the absolute minimum size without losing quality with PNGCrush support. Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Convert images into text files; with recognition performed after image processing to allow effects and resizing to improve accuracy. Convert text files into any format including PDF. Free solution for creating thumbnails, or converting from obscure formats. Now available in the following languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese, and Japanese.

What's new in this version: Version 2.70 can now output to EPS.

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