The two most common operations that people seek to do are:

• Converting a BMP (bitmap) to a jpg/jpeg.
• Converting a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) to a jpg/jpeg.

Bitmaps (BMP) are huge files and are often the output of digital cameras or image editing programs as they contain the most information. Much of this information is invisible to the human eye and so some type of image compression is called for. The most common type of compression for photographs and digital images is the JPEG/JPG.

The name "JPEG" stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. This is simply the name of the committee that created the standard. The group was organized in 1986, and issued the JPEG standard in 1992. It is also known as ISO 10918-1.

The JPEG standard specifies both the codec, which defines how an image is compressed into a stream of bytes and decompressed back into an image, and the file format used to contain that stream. The file extension most commonly used is simply ".jpg".

Why Convert a Bitmap to a JPEG/JPG?

Bitmaps take up a lot of space. They are not easy to email or use on a webpage as they use up a lot of bandwidth. For example, a 5 MB bitmap can often be compressed down to just 20b or so if you use JPG compression and shrink the image to fit in an email. Your mailing list recipients will be grateful! Your website visitors will be pleased - best of all, you save bandwidth and do not lose any of the quality that the human eye can distinguish.

How to do it?

The simplest way is to open MS Paint. Then open the file you wish to convert, then you simply click "Save As" and a dialog will appear. Then you choose to save the image as a JPG. That's it!

Convert JPG using MS Paint (Tutorial)

Couldn't be simpler right?

Well, it can. You can also visit a website such as Zamzar that will convert the image for you online.

The Best Way

The best way is to use a more professional image editing program, such as The Gimp, which you can download and use for free from the official Gimp website. The Gimp allows you to do almost anything that can be done with a professional program such as Adobe Photoshop, but for FREE!

Using the Gimp is the best way because you can then choose the quality and size in kilobytes of the final image. You can adjust the rate of image compression/quality - this is something that you simply cannot do with Zamzar and/or MS Paint.

To learn more and see in-depth tutorials on how to do this by using any of the tools mentioned, visit the website: JPG Convert - they have tutorials, demos and downloads to do this quickly and easily.

Tutorial on JPG conversion using The Gimp

Good luck!