Given that (at least in my case) one of the objectives of using DEVONthink is to reduce the need and use of printed paper documents, I’m wondering whether there an easy and quick way to compress images/scanned documents that are imported into DT Personal.
Ideally most images could be resized to desktop size, reducing the impact of images that are 10’s of Mb in size on the overall database size.
I may well get bombarded by comments saying that there are indeed scripting solutions in Dthink Pro version, but I might well ask whether there’s any hope for my DT Personal version 2.02
I’m not clear on whether you want to reduce file size, or reduce image scale, but in either case you can look to OS X Automator to create a workflow, a droplet, or a folder action that can do either or both. Examine the PDF (“apply Quartz filter”, “compress images” actions) and the Preview actions (“scale images”) in Automator. If you browse these topics in Google or Bing you’ll find several example Automator workflows that might get you where you want to go without scripting.
Thank you korm for your helpful suggestion of exploiting Automator to rescale the images.
To be honest I have used Automator in the past to rescale images, and also regularly use Graphic Convertor when batch handling digital photographs. My question arose after I had scanned an imported an image into DEVONthink Personal, only to subsequently think … this file is far bigger then it needs to be, if I keep doing this all the time my DEVONthink database is going to become a monstrosity.
I suppose that I was half-hoping that there might be something I had missed inside DEVONthink that would allow me to rescale (to reduce overall file size). Probably not, I just need to be better organised and think more carefully before I import into DEVONthink.
Something like ResizeImages Service and that developer’s other projects might be handy. Many require 10.6, which I don’t run here (yet) so I haven’t tried them.