How To Batch Process Images With Pixelmator Pro

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at how to patch process image files using Pixelmator Pro. 

Pixelmator Pro is clearly Apple's Photoshop competitor now that's part of Apple Creator Studio. But one feature it seems to be missing is the ability to batch process image files. This is when you take a whole bunch of image files and do the same thing with all of them all at once. Like perhaps compress them or add a watermark or apply some filters or effects. 

If you open Pixelmator Pro and look through the menus you won't find any batch processing tools. So it seems like this isn't possible. However, it is built into Pixelmator Pro and has been for a long time. It's just not using its own special way of doing it. Instead it's using the system's way of batch processing things which is Shortcuts. So if we look in the Shortcuts App here and we create a new shortcut we can look under Apps and find Pixelmator Pro. You'll see here two of them. The Apple Creator Studio version and the older version. You can use either one. I'm going to use the Apple Creator Studio version and you'll see here a whole variety of different things that you can do in Shortcuts. Since Shortcuts is really good at handling multiple things, like multiple files at once, this is the way to batch process things using Pixelmator Pro. You're using the components of Pixelmator Pro to change the image and you can do it for a bunch of files at once. 

So, for instance here I've got an examples folder here with five different image files. They're even different formats here. Let's build this new shortcut here and do something really simple. Let's just resize and compress these files so they are smaller and consistent, perhaps for uploading to a website or sharing with someone. So I'm going to call this one Resize & Compress with Pixelmator Pro.

So the first thing we want to do is get the images. There are many ways to do this but we're going to use a really simple one which is to create a Quick Action. So we can just use this right in the Finder. We don't even really need to be running the Shortcuts App to use it. So I'm going to go to the Details Screen here and I'm going to say I want this to be a Quick Action and it's going to be used in the Finder. I'm not going to use any other method here, although you certainly could. Under Receive I'm going to go into here and Select All, Deselect All. So nothing is selected. I'm going to select Images. So it is going to receive images from Quick Actions. 

Now what are we going to do with these images. Well, if we go into the Actions List here and remember we've got Pixelmator Pro selected, we can see all the different things we can do. First, let's resize the images. Since these may be different sizes it's at good idea to resize them and also they are huge, so we can make them smaller, perhaps, for sharing. So I'm going to drag Resize Images in here and I'm going to resize the shortcut input to, and then the size is set to 640 wide. I can actually control click, right click, or two-finger click on this and change this to Ask Each Time. Click in there again and say, I want the prompt to be Width. So now each time you run this we can have a new number for the width. But I'm going to leave the second one, height, as Auto-Height. So it will keep the same aspect ratio. The height will just be taken from whatever the width is to make the picture appear the same. 

Now the next thing I want to do is I want to compress the image. So, I've got here Convert Image Video. I'm going to select that and it will automatically pull the results of this, the resized image, to, and we want to select, say, JPEG. When we select JPEG we do have the option here to select the Quality. So let's move the quality down a bit so we can have nicely compressed files. All the way to the left will be highly compressed, so low quality small images. All the way to the right would be high quality but very large images. So something in the middle will work for our purposes here. 

Now this won't actually produce any output. It will just take each image and it will resize it and compress it. We want to Save this out and to do that we're going to Search for Save File and drop that here. It's going to save the converted file and we can go into here and say Ask Where To Save. 

Now you may notice that we're not dealing with the fact that there are probably going to be multiple images we'll be handling here. Shortcuts deals with that automatically. The input is going to be a list of images. When  it goes to Resize, Convert, and Save it is just going to do it for each item in the list. We could do a Repeat Loop around here but it's not necessary unless we want to get more complex with what we're going with each image. This will work just by itself and it is going to work as a Quick Action. 

So, let's quit Shortcuts here, because we don't need it open, and I'm going to select these five files here. Going to Control Click, Right Click, or two-finger click on them and look under Quick Actions. Sure enough there's Resizing compressed with Pixelmator Pro. I'm going to select that. Remember it is going to prompt us for the width. So let's say we want these to be 1000 pixels wide, which will make them smaller than what they are now. Then I'm going to put Done. It's going to go through and do it for each one. Remember we asked it to prompt us where to Save. So I'm going to go and say, I want them saved right to that same location. So I click Open and you can see it saved a JPEG image here for each one of the existing images. If you look at this JPEG image we can see it is a 1000 wide image right there and it is significantly smaller than what was there before because of the compressor we're using. So we can look at each one here, like that, and check it out. 

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Back in the Shortcut itself it's easy to make changes here. Like, for instance, under the Compression amount we can click here and say, Ask Each Time. So we can have that as another thing we change each time that we run it. The same thing with the Output. We can Control Click here and say, Ask Each Time, and it will ask us to choose from all of these. Of course you can go the opposite way here and instead of asking for the width you can just hardcode the width as 1000 or something like that. So you can make this easy and automatic to run or have a lot of inputs so you can change how it works each time you run it. 

Now for the next example I'm going to create an image that's going to act as a watermark that will overlay each image. Something you might typically need to do when batch processing. So, I'm going to create a new Pixelmator Pro document here. I'm going to make it, say, 600 pixels wide by 60 pixels tall and create this little thin thing here. I'm going to add some text to it. I'm going to draw a little something that could simulate like a logo or something you place in there. I'm going to get ride of the bottom layer so this is kind of transparent here. I'm going to select both of these and Apply a shadow, like that. The idea is it is black text over a dark background the white will help it standout. So this is just going to be my example watermark. I am going to Export this and save it out in a format where it will remain semi-transparent png and I'm just going to call this Watermark. Now you can see I"ve got this little watermark graphic here and you can put that wherever you want. 

Let's go and create another batch processing shortcut here. This one we'll call Watermark Images with Pixelmator Pro. We're going to go to the Details here and we're going to change it to a Quick Action in the Finder like before. We're going to have it Only Accept Images. Then we're going to go into the Actions here and I'm going to look for Pixelmator Pro Actions and select Overlay Image. So it is going to overlay what image? Well, we're going to click there to select the Watermark. It's going to overlay that on the Shortcut Input. We have a bunch of option here. What the position of it is. Let's do it at the bottom right. We can change the width, height, padding. You can play with all of this. You can even set a Blend Mode. 

Now we do want to convert the image, like before, for the output. So we're going to convert the Overlay Image to, and we'll select JPEG here. We will leave the quality pretty good. We will Save these files out and we will ask where to save each time. 

I could have easily added resize in here as well. So we could have done everything the previous one did in addition to overlaying a watermark. Now, let's try it on these. So, I'm going to Control Click, right click, or two-finger click and then Watermark Images with Pixelmator Pro. It's going to produce the new files here. Since I didn't ask for any inputs it is not going to ask me for anything else until it gets to saving and then I'll say Yes I do want it to save there. There's each additional one. 

So if we look at this JPEG here we can see the image and if we look closely at the bottom right corner, right here, we can see the overlay. So could have made that much bigger or there was the option scale it up right there in the Shortcut as well.

One more example. I'm going to start it off the same way and I'm going to use the Pixelmator Pro Shortcut Action Automatically Enhance. So it just does the Auto=enhance there. I'm also going to use an Apply Effect here. You can click here to choose the Preset. These match things that are in Pixelmator Pro. So, for instance, looking at Pixelmator Pro here under the Effects we can see each one there. So I can go to Photographic and I can see what the first one is. So Photographic 01 looks like this. So I can select that right here. There's Photographic 01 and I can apply that. Then I have to use Convert. So I have something new to Save. So I'll use the Pixelmator Pro Convert, not the convert image that's part of Shortcuts. I will choose JPEG again here and then I will choose Save File and add that to the end having it ask where to save. So now I can select these. Go to Quick Actions and then there's Enhance & Filter with Pixelmator Pro. I'll let that process all five of these and I'll Save it to the same location here. Now if we look at, say, the original and then we look at the new version you can see that it's been changed by the Enhance and the Photographic Filter that I applied. Which is useful if you have a bunch of photos using slightly different lighting, for instance, and you want them to kind of all look about the same. 

So what else is possible? Well, in Shortcuts just select Pixelmator Pro here under Actions and just look through each one. Each one has a little Help Text here if you click the i button to tell you what it is. But the best way to figure out how these work is to just created example shortcuts, like this, and give them a try. 

So the next time you need to batch process images you don't have to look for a different tool if you're already using Pixelmator Pro you can combine that with Shortcuts to batch process in all sorts of different ways. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.