Convertim Weighs Crop Versus Pad for Fixed Aspect Ratios in Batch Image Conversion

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The developer of Convertim, a portable Windows image converter built on sharp (libvips), is designing how its batch mode handles fixed aspect ratios. The app already stretches images to exact dimensions, which the author considers the poorest option for photos. Instead of per-image freeform cropping, which is impractical for large batches, Convertim offers eleven preset ratios plus a custom option, applied uniformly to all files. The author notes that cropping and padding to a given ratio always discard or fill the same fraction of the image, so the real choice is between losing pixels and adding filler. Crop placement, such as centre, top, or content-aware positioning, is also under consideration, and the author says these decisions have yet to be tested on a few hundred real images.

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