Automatically Resize Images in Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard has some very neat advanced features you can use in you daily activities. Some of these features was already in Tiger (10.4.) and Leopard (10.5.), but now in Snow Leopard, they are more organized and much easer to use.

Did you ever wanted to resize one or more images only by one click, but opening some application is just “too much work”? Well, now you can do that very fast. We’re gonna use Services feature and very powerful Automator (default in every 10.4+ OSX) application.

You can found Automator in /Applications/Automator.app

1. Open Automator and select “Service” template

New Automator has the same interface like the old ones, but now we have templates.

2. Focus only on images, we don’t want to resize text :)

What to do when that Services action is called?

We need to let Finder know what to do with selected image. I always make a duplicate of images that I want to resize, so this resize action will overwrite the file, so be sure that is a copy before applying the action.

3. Find the Library on the left and select Files & Folders

3.1. First we are gonna get selected file by choosing “Get Selected Finder Item” and dragging it to the right:

3.2. Add text to the name, to know which size we applied by dragging “Rename Finder Items” (it will warn you that is better to make a copy, but as I use already duplicates, click “Don’t add”)

Now that the action has the file we want to resize, and the name was changed, we are ready to resize the image.

3.3. Select Photos in the library and choose “Scale Images”. I’m using 800px resize, but you can make your own size or two.

And this is it. Of course this is very basic operation, and it’s open for your customization, like Sent to Mail after resizing. Which is very useful sometimes, just add Mail»New Mail Message after the resize (you can use one or more images)

Or include copying to Desktop at the start and don’t use manual copying. Only remember that the actions are applied in the order you put them in the Automator editor.

Now when you are done with one action, just click Save As and put the name of it, I used “Resize (800)” because its short and easy to know what it is. All the Services actions you can find in System Preferences » Keyboard » Keyboard Shortcuts

If you want to check it how is working, just find some image (remember: Duplicate it first), and right click, search at the bottom our new action “Resize (800)” and click on it. If you followed all steps right, the image should be resized and with new name.

If you have more than four actions, you will see “Services” and the actions will be inside. There is also option to put a keyboard shortcut to make it even faster to use, but for some unknown-to-me reason, I can't get that keyboard shortcut to work.