Using the New Convert Image Quick Action On a Mac

macOS Monterey includes a new Quick Action to convert images to other file types and resize them without launching an app.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a look at the new Convert Image Quick Action in macOS Monterey. 
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So the new feature in macOS Monterey is a Quick Action that appears in the Finder that allows you to quickly convert images from one file type to another and also resize them. So here I have a folder filled with images. So I'm going to select one and if I Control click on it, two finger click on a trackpad or right click on a mouse, I'll get the Context Menu. There I'll find Quick Actions. Now under Quick Actions I'll find some actions that have been around for a little while like Rotate Left, Create PDF, and the new one Convert Image. This was just added. Now a better way to get to Quick Actions is using the Preview in the Finder. So if I go to View, Show Preview, then I get the Preview here on the right which includes at the bottom the access to Quick Actions by just clicking a button. Now notice Rotate Left and Create PDF are the first two on the list. So they get their own button and under More is Convert Image. I can customize that and go in here and put Convert Image at the very top. Now it will be the first button instead and that moves Create PDF into the More button.  
So it is very easy to use. I can click Convert Image and I get this special control here that allows me to convert to one of three formats, one of four image sizes, and preserve metadata or not. So first let's look at Format. It's got JPEG, PNG, and AGIF. Now we're probably all familiar with JPEG. It's a pretty standard way to store images. PNG is another common file type typically lossless so it's no compression there and it's used a lot for graphics and things. AGIF is the newer way to store photos and things. It's much better at compression than JPEG is so it's the same quality but a much smaller file size, or you could look at it as higher quality at the same file size. This is what the iPhone uses by default now. The only disadvantage to using AGIF is if you have an older device or a Mac running an older operating system it would not know about AGIF because it's so new. So if you want maximum compatibility with older devices then you want JPEG. But if you have all newer devices and they all know AGIF then really this is the best format to use. 
Another reason you might want to have JPEG is if you're uploading to a website and that website itself doesn't recognize this newer format. So insist on getting a JPEG image. This would actually be a common use for this tool here. You have a high efficiency file here, AGIC. AGIC and AGIF are pretty much interchangeable. There's a lot more going on in AGIC but it's using the AGIF format and you want to convert it to JPEG because you need to upload it to a site that doesn't accept AGIF files. So you would choose JPEG as the format.
Then the Image size. It shows you here the file size you're going to get. Note that this file here is 3.5 MB as an AGIC file. So actual size as a JPEG, just full conversion, is going to increase the size to 5 MB because JPEG doesn't compress as well. But if you want to go to large size or medium size or small you can get smaller files. Let's choose Large so we get a 600K file here. I'll click Convert. You see it converts and then it immediately selects a file name. So your next step is to name it something else. You can just start typing otherwise press Return to accept that. So here I've got the large file and if I look at the original I can see here that the dimensions were 4032 by 3024. Going to large actually gives me 1280 by 960. Now let's convert this to the other sizes to see what you get there. I can see that the medium file is going to have a width of 640 and the small 320. Here's the original AGIC. It's a much larger image than this and I could zoom in here. That's the resolution I get. If I go to large it looks about the same but if I zoom in the resolution is not as good, of course. It is way fewer pixels horizontally. The medium, you could see here, isn't even as large just normally and you can see the resolution there being a lot less. Then here's the small. 
So you're changing the size so you're sacrificing quality. But you're getting a much smaller file. So here's a JPEG image and it's 4 MB, 4032 across. Let's covert that and make it a JPEG image still but just go large and we'll convert. We'll see here now the new image is 1280 across and it's 478K. Much smaller. Now here's a PNG file and as I said before these are lossless. This is what the image looks like normally. If I were to use Convert Image here I could convert it actual size JPEG and since JPEG is going to compress a lot better than PNG you could see it's going to be 2.2 MB. If I were to switch to AGIF and convert to actual size you could see it's going to be 1.8 MB, even smaller. 
Note that even though it can convert only to those three file types it can actually take other file types as input. So here's a PSD, a photoshop document. I could convert image to a JPEG or one of these other types. Let's do actual size. So I'll convert this and you could see it takes a 116 MB photoshop document and converts it to a 3.3 MB JPEG image. So if you need to convert from Photoshop to JPEG you can do that without having to open it up in Photoshop. You could do the same thing with a TIF image. I'm going to demonstrate two things here. This is a TIF image, which is another lossless file format that's very old. Here you could see it's only 620K because it's a 540 by 365 image. So a small image. Now if I go to Convert and I want to convert that to say JPEG notice that medium and large and actual size as well are pretty much the same file size. That's because since the actual image is 540 pixels across going to medium is not going to be able to shrink that at all. You can't go from 540 down to 640. So it's going to keep it at 540 across. The same thing with large and actual size. So you're not actually going to be changing the image size at all. Only if you go to small, 320 pixels across, we'll be changing the image size and actually getting a smaller file. 
But anyway you do it you are getting a smaller file. You're going from 620K down to one of these sizes because you're taking uncompressed file, a TIF file, and converting it to a compressed file, a JPEG file.  
So some other notes like Preserve Metadata. Metadata are the types of information that's stored with the image like when the photo was taken, what camera was used, the camera setting, even GPS data. So if you have Preserve Metadata on then the new compressed file will have the same metadata. You can turn it off to get rid of that. Why would you want to do that? Well, perhaps you're uploading it to a site and you don't want somebody to be able to grab that image and get say the GPS location where you took the photo or the exact time that you took the photo. So you can turn that off if you want.
Now I know I'm going to get the question how can you customize this to save in other sizes or in other formats. You can't. This is what this Quick Action does. If you need to convert an image to a specific size you can just do that using the Preview App on your Mac. So to do that what you're going to want to do first is to duplicate the file because any changes you make in Preview will be saved instantly. So let's take this AGIC file here. I'm going to use File, Duplicate and create a new copy of it. Then I'm going to double click on it to Open it in Preview or you can Control click on it and choose Open With and open it in any image editing app you've got. So in Preview, if you want to change the size now, you would go to Tools and then Adjust Size. So if I wanted to be 2000 pixels across I can change it. Now the file is changed. This is why we made a duplicate of it because we don't want to change to original. Now you can also change the format in Preview by going to File, then Export. Then here you can choose Format and you have more options than just those three. So in this case let's go and stick with the JPEG format and you could see I also have quality options. So notice that right now it's 1.7 MB. If I bring this down it will adjust it to something smaller. Sometimes you have to bring it down quite a bit to even see any change if the image is already compressed. So let's say we wanted to get this under 400K. We'll choose where it's going to Save. So we'll Save back to the sample image there and we'll call it something so it doesn't overwrite the existing file. Then we'll Save it out. Now I've got the original here, 3.5 MB, 4032 across. I've got that copy I made, the duplicate that is 2000 across and you can see that brings it down to 407K, and then I've exported it as a JPEG because say I needed it in that format and this one is 2000 pixels across also but at 387K. You can see it's a JPEG image here.
So you have the complete freedom to create what you want. The Quick Action is just a quick way to get a conversion with limited options. Then, of course, if you have other image editing tools you can use those. Sometimes to do it in even fewer steps and sometimes there are presets in those to allow you to convert things very quickly as well. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 6 Responses to “Using the New Convert Image Quick Action On a Mac”

Amir Glazer

3 years ago

Hi Gary, Great video!
Any chance you can post a video showing how to use Shortcuts to Reduce PDF files size?
Thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

Amir: There's no action in Shortcuts for that.

Carl geis

Thanks for the great video Gary. Is there a way to get my photos to come up in the Finder so that I can change the file format and size? I'm running Monterey but all of the folders in my finder appear to be empty.

Carl: So do you have your photos in the Photos app now? You wouldn't want to change the format and size of the original photo. Keep that as-is. If you want a copy at a different size and format, export it from Photos as you like and use that copy to upload or share or whatever.

Lise MacDonald

I use my images in photo books, to send out to be printed etc. All these services require JPG. I am not sure I see a reason to keep the original HEI images. Is there a quick easy way to change all my images to JPG within Photos?

Lise: Keep them as-is in your library (smaller files, higher quality) and just export as jpegs when you need to upload them. Eventually any service that plans to keep going will accept HEIC too. Surprised they don't already.

Comments Closed.

Using the New Convert Image Quick Action On a Mac

Comments: 6 Responses to “Using the New Convert Image Quick Action On a Mac”

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