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How-To: Quickly resize images on OS X using a Service with Automator

Every day I use a handy service created with Automator to resize images exported from 4K footage to a smaller size. It’s easy to resize images in an app like Preview or Pixelmator, but using a service works better for me since it can batch resize multiple images in seconds, and it’s directly accessible from the Finder. Here’s how you can create your own handy image resizing service using Automator.

Step 1: Launch Automator.

Step 2: Select Service for the document type.

Step 3: Choose image files in the Services receives selected drop down box.

Step 4: Under Actions (on the left) select Files and Folders, and drag Get Specified Finder Items to the build area (right side).

Step 5: Under Actions select Photos, and drag Scale Images to the build area.

Video walkthrough

Step 6: Automator will prompt you to add an add a Copy Finder Items action to preserve original files in a separate folder. I choose not to do this, but if having backups of your images prior to resizing is important to you, it’s something to consider.

Step 7: In the Scale Images action panel, insert the width that you’d like to resize to. In my circumstances, I choose 1920, since I’m resizing 3840 x 2160 files. This will create a 1920 x 1080 image since I’m working with 16:9 input.

Step 8: Go to File → Save, and give the service a name in the Save service as box.

Step 9: Find an image file in Finder, right click, select Services, and choose the name of the service that you just created. The image will be automatically resized with no prompts or fanfare. You can even select multiple images at once, and resize them all in one fell swoop. Super handy for my workflow.

Automator is a very powerful app, and there are tons of ways to achieve the same end result. You can get really fancy with Automator, but I like to keep it simple and straight to the point with minimal user interaction. If you’re really pressed for time, you can also create a keyboard shortcut for the service that you create via System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts → Services.

Do you use services on your Mac? If so, what for?

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Comments

  1. Dmitri Samoilov - 8 years ago

    Actually I don’t, but it looks like a really powerful and convenient tool! Is there any collections of Services written by people?

    • PhilBoogie - 8 years ago

      Dough wrote a bunch for iTunes, very helpful when renaming and organising your music and video’s.

  2. MorningZ - 8 years ago

    Thanks for the great tip ! Will be very useful

  3. Me In LA - 8 years ago

    Well done tutorial! I use this to scale my Retina screen shots to 50% for sharing. Works great. I’ve seen a ton of tutorials on this over the years and they almost always were awful. Thank you.

  4. timothyrlewis - 8 years ago

    This actually got me interested in using Automator for the first time. I tried it out and got it to do three consecutive resizes on the way through, which I use for my CSS-responsive blog. Now I am figuring out how to get them to rename on the way through. Golden!

  5. chaosbreakthrough - 8 years ago

    Very useful thanks, it would be cool to continue to see this kind of tips.

  6. Morten Yde - 8 years ago

    Awesome tip!
    Definitely gonna use this on my girlfriends Mac. She blogs a lot and uses tons of pictures.

    Thanks Jeff :-)

  7. Nice article, indeed Automator is a great tool to automate (duh!) all kind of tasks.

  8. vkd108 - 8 years ago

    Then again you could use EasyBatchPhoto

  9. cjfeehan - 8 years ago

    How about a command to shrink all file sizes (say, to no greater than 2MB which is WordPress’ cutoff)?

  10. On my version of Automator, the category is called “Finder”, not “Files & Folders”. Then the category for “Scale Photos” is not in “Photos” (which refers to the Photos app itself), but within the “Preview” category.

  11. Pot Hield - 8 years ago

    Thank you for bringing my focus on to Automator. Never knew this app can do so much.

  12. Thank you for this tutorial. Have been looking for a quicker way to resize a couple hundred images. Worked like a charm!

  13. Mohamed Hamad - 7 years ago

    I’d like to setup an automator service to copy the files to a folder of my choosing and then crop/scale. I’m able to pre-define a destination folder for the copy, but I can’t figure our how to ask for a destination folder when I run the service. Is this possible with automator? the “copy finder items” doesn’t accept a variable or a destination folder. just the files to copy.

  14. The Real Nirv - 7 years ago

    Great! The only drawback here, and I did exactly as you, is that the Finder, in my case under Sierra 10.12.4 continued to show pixel size under the previous larger size. I am not referring to the Info window which did report the new smaller size correctly.

  15. coolblondz - 7 years ago

    Great tutorial, thank you. Was just going to buy an app and found this instead and it’s perfect.

Author

Avatar for Jeff Benjamin Jeff Benjamin

Jeff is the head of video content production for 9to5. He initially joined 9to5Mac in 2016, producing videos, walkthroughs, how-tos, written tutorials, and reviews. He takes pride in explaining things simply, clearly, and concisely. Jeff’s videos have been watched hundreds of millions of times by people seeking to learn more about today’s tech. Subscribe to 9to5Mac on YouTube to catch Jeff’s latest videos.