This is one among many useful tips and tricks on Ubuntu for daily life. There is a utility named Converseen, that allows you to mass convert and rotate photos by clicks. This tutorial will help you to use the tool with examples so easy we hope everybody can follow. Now let's start exercising!

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Terminology

Files, aka Nautilus, the name of Ubuntu file manager.

Converseen, the utility to do the job. 

Bulk conversion, aka mass conversion or converting multiple files, is an activity to manipulate multiple files (mostly pictures) at once with certain options.

Preparation

Do this command line in your Terminal:

$ sudo apt-get install converseen

Once installed, run Converseen from your application menu. 

Sample Files

For better explanation, we present here a set of sample pictures in original PNG format. We use logos of various GNU/Linux distros here. They are from arch to zorin. We will manipulate these logo pictures using Converseen. We download them all from one place commons.wikimedia.org.

Basic Use

Basically, what you first need to do is to import all pictures into Converseen.

1. Run Converseen from application menu.

2. At first run, Converseen will look like picture below.

4. Navigate to your pictures folder. 

5. Select all pictures you want to convert. 

6. Drag and drop pictures from Files window into Converseen. 

7. In Converseen window, click Check All. 

8. Now Converseen will look like below.

You are ready to batch convert them all.

Panels

What you will use the most in Converseen is the left sidebar aka Actions Panel. It is where all manipulation options belong. Except, the Conversion Formats panel is located at mid-bottom area of the window.

Converting 

Import all pictures to Converseen.

Select all pictures. 

Tick check mark to Image's directory under Output options in the left sidebar.

Select Convert to: from Conversion Formats panel to bottom. 

Select JPEG. 

Click Convert on the toolbar.

Converseen will show a progress bar dialog. 

Once finished, click Remove All to clean the job.

As a result, converted pictures will be available in the same directory as original pictures. See picture below. It shows the original in PNG and converted ones in JPEG. Notice the ones with black background.

Flipping

Import all pictures to Converseen.

Select all pictures. 

Enable 'Rotate and Flip' tab on left panel. 

Select 'Vertically' or 'Horizontally' according to your need.

Tick check mark to Rename under Output options panel. 

Tick either 'Prefix/Suffix' or 'Progressive Number' option, otherwise tick Overwrite all if you want to replace all files.

Click Convert.

Once the process finished, the result will show in the directory. See example pictures below.

Vertical flip samples:

Horizontal flip samples:

Resizing (Dimension)

Import all pictures. 

Select all pictures. 

Enable 'Dimensions tab' on the left panel. 

Tick 'Scale image' option. 

Tick 'Maintain aspect ratio' option.

You can resize either way:

• By percent (%) unit: fill for example 50% x 50% to shrink pictures half their dimension.
• By pixel (px) unit: fill for example 64 x 64 to shrink pictures more or less to avatar dimension.

Click Convert.

Once the process finished, the result will show in the directory. See example below. We have three pictures with different dimensions (500, 600, 700) and the resulting pictures all 64 x 64 pixels.

Resizing (File Size) 

Converseen currently does not have Compress feature (unlike our favorite KDE KIM batch converter). This means, you cannot simply select a preset to make mass pictures size lower. However, compression can still be done with another way (aka manually) such as 

a) converting into a certain format,

b) shrinking the dimension, and / or

c) shrinking the resolution.

See previous screenshot and focus at the file size difference. 

Rotating

Import all pictures into Converseen. 

Select all pictures.

Enable 'Rotation and flip' tab in the left panel. 

You can rotate pictures by several choices:

• 90 degree to left
• 90 degree to right
• 180 degree

Click Convert.

Once the process finished, the result will show in the directory. See example pictures below.

Afterword

That's all the basics. We hope this could help you who work in multimedia fields like graphic design, photography or simply daily life. Enjoy working with it.

References

Official Website

Source code (GNU GPL)

Donation and contribution page

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.