One other thing to consider - this script keeps three images on your hard drive (the original, the 1x and the 2x). This is an issue that could be addressed by writing a script (Applescript or otherwise), but this is beyond the scope of this today's blog post. As a consequence a 100px image will be blown up to 150px and 300px and, when you're blowing up images like this, they'll be blurry.

If an image is smaller than 300px, or 150px, it will still try to create images in those sizes. There is one issue I don't like about this workflow. This is one more way that Automator is like 'real' programming: Job one is making something that works, jobs 2 through 99 are refining what you've done - if you're so inclined! Just don't go overboard - it's easy to do, as this xkcd comic sums this up perfectly! In fact, as I typed this up I thought of a couple ways this workflow could be changed to work more efficiently. Automator is obviously highly customizable, and there's no right or wrong way to solve a problem. Hopefully you'll find this helpful, though, and take this and customize it for your own needs. There's about a 97.6% chance that you don't need the exact same thing that I need here. There's also AppleScript, which is supposed to be a layperson's scripting language but, despite all my programming experience, I have a hard time wrapping my head around it. For the super nerdy, bash scripts on the command line, python or ruby scripts (or even php or javascript for that matter) can work wonders. The Mac has some great tools for automation. However, when you find yourself repeating a multistep task like this it's time to consider some sort of automation. So, I either have to retype the name I chose for this image or copy and paste it.Įvery step is simple.

The point of these screenshots is to display them on my Web site, so the last step is to enter the image name into my database.This involves navigating about 6 layers deep into my file system. Upload to my server using my FTP client (I use Transmit).However, I've been thinking a lot about retina screens lately and I've been starting to collect versions of my images that are twice as large too. On my website I display product images in a way that requires them to be no larger than 150px wide. Use Preview to resize the picture then save the file.Find the new image file on the desktop and double click it to open in the Preview app.Rename the file to something that makes sense (otherwise it'll be named something like Screen Shot at 8.11.27 AM.png).Take the screenshot (on a Mac pressing ⌘-shift-4 and dragging the crosshairs over your target will do the trick).

Mac automator workflows save to app