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.