I found a website that lets you download old (copyright-free) books as images. However, the images have the extension .jp2, something I’ve never seen before. I finally figured out that I can open them in Illustrator, then reduce them in size (anywhere from 30%-80%) and save them as Illustrator files, which I can then open in Photoshop. In Photoshop, I can then save them as Photoshop files, which I can then import into Aperture, the program I’m currently using to manage my images.
The only problem is that it’s a long, tedious process. I have hundreds of images to process, and there are too many steps to go through. Is there a way to speed up the process - like automatically reducing all the images in size or automatically converting them to Photoshop or some other format?
I’m really not sure what extension is best for storing them in Aperture. I’d prefer something small in file size, but the important thing is that I’m simply able to retrieve them, open them and work with them in Photoshop (possibly Illustrator, though I’ve never really learned how to use that program).
According to Adobe, Photoshop should import the .jp2 photo natively (without having to go through Illustrator). What version of Photoshop are you using? If it is an older version I’d look for a plugin to convert from the JPG2000 format or look to an independent batch conversion program (here’s one for a dollar at the mac app store). You may even be able to download an updated format converter from Adobe.
You are right though that it is something you should be able to batch convert, I saw this plugin mentioned on DPReview from 2001!
Storage and file sizes can be a personal thing. It really depends on whether the books are pictorial or contain words, and also what you hope to be able to do with them in future.
Newer versions of imagemagick should be able to do this for free, it’ll save them out to e.g jpeg / tiff etc
It’s a command line program, but once you learn the correct command string you’ll be able to convert any amount of images in one operation.