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Automator Action to Save as JPG

2723 Views 4 Replies 5 Participants Last post by  kps
So, I'm trying to wrap up a website I developed, and I'm left with a folder of images from the previous developers which I need to generate thumbnails of to accomodate some of the new features.

Long story short, when I'm taking the original images from the website and running through a photoshop action to resize them Photoshop gives me an error saying "could not complete your request because an unknown or invalid JPEG marker type is found".

Oddly, I can open the files that are corrupt in Preview, Save As the file, and then it will open fine in Photoshop to run through the resizing action I created.

So - I'd like to automate this because 5000 photos is a lot to go through manually. I tried making an Automator action to handle the "save as" task in preview, but I suck at it.

Anyone have any tips, or direction they can give me on this?

I need an action that will take a folder of photos -> open in preview -> Save as (jpeg) -> close the photo -> open the next photo... repeat until all photos in the folder are complete.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
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I suck at Automaker too, I'm embarrassed to admit -- it's something I should learn more about.

However, just because I don't have an Automator answer for you doesn't mean I don't have AN answer, and that answer is: Graphic Converter.

It's designed to do batch conversions exactly like what you're looking for, and seems to handle "corrupt" or malformed JPEGs better than Photoshop.

It's free to try, so you have nothing to lose (and it's cheap to own, btw).
I have an AppleScript based applet that does nothing but resize images. It doesn't open preview or anything like that. You just drag an image over the applet and it does it's thing. A request pops up looking for the length of the longest file side (in pixels). Finalizes with a snappy little dialog box. Works for folders of images as well but all the images will be resized to meet the longest side criteria.

PM me if you think this will work and I'll email it to you. I downloaded it from the net; it's called Image Resizer.
I suck at Automaker too, I'm embarrassed to admit -- it's something I should learn more about.

However, just because I don't have an Automator answer for you doesn't mean I don't have AN answer, and that answer is: Graphic Converter.

It's designed to do batch conversions exactly like what you're looking for, and seems to handle "corrupt" or malformed JPEGs better than Photoshop.

It's free to try, so you have nothing to lose (and it's cheap to own, btw).
My version of GC is registered for so I have no way of testing, however I believe that you have to be registered in order to do batch conversions.

Still I use GC to make index prints and to rename photos as well as the occasional kind or size conversion, and have found it to be worth every penny.

As to Automator I have tried to figure it out on numerous occasions and have given up on it altogether. For me Automator lacks the intuitiveness that attracted me to the Mac platform so many years ago.
"Scale Images" are available in Automator.

Work on a copy of the folder or have your Automator Action do it at startup, just in case things go wrong.

The image below shows both actions, copy items and scale. (Forget the create thumbnail icon action)
Click the image for a larger size.

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