Wednesday 18th March
Tip 124 - Automator [1] - Resize images to 800 pixels
Right today we are going to create an automator task that will resize an image, or images, to 800 pixels in width for use in Talk Photography.
Run "
Automator" from Applications
Now we are going to be working with images so we will click on "
Photos & Images"
You will now be asked where you want to get the images from and being photos this will default to your iPhoto Library. Change this to My Mac
Also change the drop down which shows as "
Ask for images now" to "
Use image files selected in the Finder when workflow runs"
Now click (
Choose).
Next we want to resize the pictures BUT we would rather create some new pictures of the correct size and leave the original intact.
The relevant "ACTION" is unsurprisingly under Photos so click Photos and the list now shows a list of things you could do with photos. One of them is "
Scale Images", double click this.
Automator is intelligent enough to realise that you might want to leave the original intact and so ask the following question.
Click "
ADD"
You can see that Automator has actually added TWO tasks "
Copy Finder Items" and "
Scale Images"
Copy Finder Items:
This defaults to the desktop and that is where I want them so I am going to leave them there but I would like them to replace files that are in that location so I will click the "REPLACING EXISTING FILES" box.
Scale Images:
This action default to "
TO SIZE (PIXELS)" which is again what we want BUT the size of "480" pixels is not right so we can change this to 800
Saving the Task:
The task needs to be saved TWICE once as an editable file so that we can possibly change it again later and to do this select:
FILE >> SAVEAS and save this to your documents folder
Now we need to integrate the new TASK with Finder and we do this by selecting:
FILE >> SAVE AS PLUG IN...
Give this a relevant name such as "
resize800" and click SAVE.
Using the TASK
To use our new task we simply select a file or files in Finder and right click once we do this we go down the list to find "MORE" then the sub menu to "AUTOMATOR" then in the new sub menu you will find "resize800", select this.
Now as if by magic all the files you selected will suddenly appear on your desktop resized to 800 pixels wide.