ConvertIt is another micro-app from developer Sam Gray & interface designer Andrew Sullivan with one sole purpose. That is to take your images, whatever format they may be, and convert them into various other formats. That’s it really, just easy image conversion.
When launched you are presented with a Dock and Menu Bar Icon. The only one which we need to worry about is the Menu Bar Icon as this is where the magic happens. Right off the bat if an image is dragged to the Menu Bar Icon a little HUD will drop down with some options for you to choose from. It will ask for the formats that you would like to convert your master image into which include: .png, .jpeg, .tiff, .pdf, .gif, .icns, .bmp, & .ico, & the location of where you would like your converted images saved.
In the Preferences there are only two items that can be selected; firstly, a checkbox for Default Types which, when selected – as the name suggests –, allows you to select the default conversion formats and locations. Selecting Default Types in the Preferences bypasses the HUD and will convert all images following the options that have been selected previously.
What I would like to see in a future release is the ability to invoke a Global Keyboard Shortcut to invoke the conversion process. So for example in my Downloads folder I could select one or many images and hit my key combination and “Hey Presto!” my images are converted. Maybe the addition of two shortcuts would be best, one to invoke the default settings and the other would bring up the HUD. For simple apps like this I think the ability for it to only reside in the Menu Bar is a ver big plus so the option in the preferences to hide/show the Dock Icon would be greatly appreciated. I’ve just recieved word from Sam that he’s just submitted an update to ConvertIt which adds in the ability to hide/show the Dock Icon. In saying that I am a Mac user who has Dock Hiding turned on all the time and no icons living there permanently.
I will say however that a lot of effort has been put into the design of the Dock Icon I wish more application designers paid this much attention to detail. I love opening up my applications folder and turning the icon size right up to 512 x 512 to look at some of the well designed icons.
One minor gripe that I had is that nothing happens if I drag an image onto the Dock Icon. Seeing at there is no real ConvertIt window, the Dock Icon seems redundant unless this feature is introduced. I think the addition of being able to drag images directly to the dock would be a much used feature in the future. This has also been added into the update so I guess that means that I don’t have any gripes now :).
Overall, ConvertIt is a very nice application and I can see myself using it in the future.
Sam has also said that he is looking into adding my keyboard shortcuts suggestion. He works fast! :D