Blaze ImgConvert 2.05

Overview

Blaze ImgConvert is a lightweight image converting software for Windows. It doesn’t come with a big toolset, but it has a great simplicity that makes it quite useful for quick tasks.

Installation

The installation has no difficult steps. In one of them you will be prompted to choose any additional components you want to install alongside the core files. The available additional components are basically nothing more than support for PDF files, and if you include this feature it will be downloaded automatically from the internet.

You can use this program in any computer running Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista and 7.

Interface

The interface is so simple and clear that there is no way anyone will be getting confused to that. It has the menu at the top with 4 tabs (File, Edit, Options and Help) and 3 buttons in the toolbar (Add File(s), Remove File(s) and Process File(s)). In the main area you can see a list of the files ready to be converted. At the bottom is a panel with 3 tabs: Convert, Resize and Output. The first tab is for selecting the output file type and choosing JPEG quality and TIFF compression (if converting to JPG and TIF files respectively). From the resize tab you can define the new width and height your converted images in case you want to resize them, and in the Output tab you can see a couple of options you can make.

Pros

Even though ImgConvert doesn’t have many settings, it still has the basic features it needs. Before the conversion process starts you can choose to resize the image and maintain aspect ratio. Also there is an option for overwriting existing files and an option to use the source folder for the output file(s). Deleting the source files after conversion finishes is possible as well.

The supported input file types include AFP, ANI, AVI, AWD, BMP, DIB, CGM, CLP, CMP, CMW, CMX, CUR, CUT, CT, DCX, DGN, DICOM (DIC, DCM), DRW, DXF, DWF, DWG, EMF, EPS, EXIF (EXF, EXIF), FAX, Flic (FLC, FLI), FPX, GBR, GEM, GIF, HPGL, HPGL2, ICO, IFF, LBM, IOCA (ICA), IMG, ITG, JBIG, JPEG / JFIF (JPG, JPE, JPEG, JIF, JFIF, JTIF, etc.), JPEG 2000 (JP2, J2K), MAC, MODCA, MSP, PBM, PCD, PCL, PCT, PCX, PDF, PDL, PGM, PLT, PNG, PPM, PRN, PRT, PS, PSD, PTOCA, PTK, RAS, RLE, SCT, SGI, SHP, SMP, SUN, SVG, TGA, TIFF, XBM, XPM, XWD, WBMP, WFX, WMF and WPG. Supported output file formats on the other hand are BMP, GIF, ICO, JPG, PNG, PDF, PNM and TIFF. If you want to convert to JPG, you can adjust the output quality by entering a value between 1-100, and if you want to convert to TIF you can optionally use LZW, CITT3, CITT4, RLE compression.

Cons

There are not many settings that you can tweak, and it also seems to have trouble reading files with long filenames (it gives an error message and then terminates). In Addition, drag and drop is not supported.

Something else that is really weird and distracting is that in the product’s website there are many options and features mentioned that are actually missing from the product itself.

Alternatives

A quick search will give you tons of results for image converting software. Irfanview (free) is an image viewer with a lot of additional features, one of them being image resizing. It is possibly the best software regarding image viewing and editing. Other alternatives to ImgConvert are 123FileConvert (paid) and PhotoScape (paid). An online option is our own Download3k file converter, currently in test mode only.

Conclusion

If you just want a small program to simply convert some images from one format to another without any fancy graphics and buttons, Blaze ImgConvert is what you need. However, it is not recommended for anything more than that.