Converting TIF files to JPG on M3 tahoe

For batch conversion, create an Automator Workflow or Quick Action that includes the Photos > Change Type of Images action.

For a one-off, just open the TIF in Preview then do File > Export > Format as > JPEG

I presume your goal is to save space for your archived photos.

JPEG is a terrible choice. Especially for archiving. It's a lossy compression scheme that will irrecoverably throw out data. Only at its highest quality setting is it somewhat safe to use. But every time you open and resave a JPEG, the data loss compounds.

A much, much better choice is PNG. This is a lossless compression scheme. No matter how many times you open and resave file, not one pixel of it will be any different from the original.

As far as converting the files themselves, in particular for a lot of them, easiest is to set up an automated process. Photoshop makes this easy, but not everyone has this app. However, the free Affinity Suite will do that.

Once the app is installed, put all of the TIFF images into one folder. Or do them a folder at a time if you have reason to keep the images in particular groups.

In Affinity, choose File > New Image Process > Batch Job . You'll get this palette:

Make absolutely certain Save as Affinity file is off, and Save as PNG is on. Literally, only Affinity can open Affinity files. Which would be a very poor way to save archived images.

Click the Add button, navigate to the folder where your TIFFs are and select all of them. Click the Open button. The TIFFs will all be added to the palette in the left column. Click OK.

There is very likely a way to do this without Affinity by using the built-in Automator app, but I've never tested anything with that.

Okay, I looked at Automator and this was incredibly easy.

Open the Automator app in the Applications folder.

Personally, I would use Application since it's then a drag and drop option.

Click on Photos in the left column, then Change Type of Images. Drag that entry into the right column. You'll get a message warning the action will change the file type. Well, yeah, that's the idea.

Change type to PNG. The default is to dump everything on the desktop, which would be a huge mess. Change the location to somewhere else. I just made a folder on the desktop named xxx. All converted images will go there instead.

Lastly, choose File > Save As. I chose the desktop as the location and named it convert to png. You end up with this:

You're set. Now you can just drag and drop your TIFF images onto the app you created and the converted PNG files will be saved to the folder you set in Automator.

Copy the .tif[f] files to a new folder. Select all of these images in that new folder. Then right-click on the first selected image and choose Quick Actions > Convert Image. Set the resulting dialog to the following and click Convert to PNG.

Almost instantly the folder will now include PNG images. In that Finder WIndow search field, you can enter:

name:.png

to just display the PNG images for subsequent selection and filing.

Note: not a solution for multipage .tiff images.

Tested: macOS Tahoe 26.5.1

Nice! I'm so used to using Photoshop for bulk conversions, I didn't even know that was a contextual option. Very simple and doesn't require a fixed folder location. Simply does the conversions in the same folder the originals are in without deleting them.

Note: not a solution for multipage .tiff images.

Ah, but it is! I dropped 6, 12, 50 .tif images into folder, selected all of them and then right clicked in the group to convert to PNG. It did all of them.

To round out the excellent suggestions from others that use graphical tools, I though that I would add a CLI solution for anyone with that experience level that may read this post. In macOS you can script the conversion of some raster formats with the "scriptable image processing system" (sips) tool. The list of supported formats is a bit dated but for tiff, png, and jpeg operations it does a fine job. Open terminal and run the command "man sips" or search on the web for more information about the options with include format conversions and resizing.

I have a six-page TIFF image that the Finder Quick Actions -> Convert Image (PNG) only produces the first page as the PNG. Hence, that note in my post. I think you mistook my meaning of multipage .tiff images for multiples of .tiff images.

Yup. I read it as multiple, individual images. Not the multi-page type. Not at all hard to see where those wouldn't work.