Thanks Tom for the help with this and the details on the Scrivener workflow.
That is interesting in your picture that you got all those images below your trash. I didn't think and can't get anything below my trash it always has to stay in the research folder. Regardless that is a pretty cool idea that helps some but mostly my files are always stored in the text document which as you know Scrivener saves as .rtf so I can't optimize the images at that point.
Uhps, don’t do that! If you drag them into the RTF the image data gets hex-encoded and you get twice the file size, no matter if the PNG was optimized before or not. If you leave them stored as individual files inside the document bundle (as shown) they keep their original format and size.
That is interesting in your picture that you got all those images below your trash. I didn't think and can't get anything below my trash it always has to stay in the research folder.
I think it doesn’t matter if they are inside the Research folder or just in the sidebar. If you open the document bundle they seem to be always in the “Docs” subfolder.
Yikes, I never checked that, now I am even more depressed about what I have been doing than before! I just did a test and a 2.1MB image made a new document jump to 4.2MB. Optimizing that same image made the image 1.2MB and then when dragged into Scrivener went up to 3.4MB so more than double but not quite as much as the none optimized image (I see no noticeable difference between the optimized and not optimized when using Squash.app).
I might just be stuck with bloating my Scrivener files because I need them inline with the text I am typing and see no other way around it. Your information was much like watching the daily news, I feel informed yet sad. In all seriousness though thank you for making me aware of that.
I see no noticeable difference between the optimized and not optimized when using Squash.app
I don’t know what exactly Squash does. Judging by the reviews on the MAS and on macupdate, it doesn’t seem very promising.
Virtually all good PNG tools are open source or freeware, e.g. pngquant or advpng (which I’m both using in my macro).
Pngquant can reduce the size by a huge degree, but it is not lossless, since it reduces the number of colors. However you can set the amount of quantization by setting the desired percentage of the original quality, which is very handy. And for things like screenshots (large areas of uniform colors, not much halftones) 256 colors or less are more than enough.
Advpng is lossless and thus not as efficient as pngquant. It optimizes the PNG compression by applying more efficient algorithms.
A combination of both yields very good results which are hard to beat IMO.
I might just be stuck with bloating my Scrivener files because I need them inline with the text I am typing and see no other way around it.
If you need them inline, a couple of possibilities come to mind:
Produce HTML documents
Use Apple’s RTF implementation (aka TextEdit). If you add images to an Apple-RTF the document will be converted to .rtfd, which is a document bundle that contains the text (RTF) file and the unchanged images.
Thank you I have purchased DevonThink Pro and Papers but they were a bit more than what I needed in the end and just got in the way.
I actually have Quiver and considered it but it doesn't seem to add images inline but I will have to mess with that some more. Seems like I purchased Ulysses in a bundle but I will have to look for that if I really did or not.
I actually have Quiver and considered it but it doesn't seem to add images inline but I will have to mess with that some more.
Well, you can drag images into a Text cell. But, since the whole Quiver is based on cells, I think this qualifies as “inline”
I have purchased DevonThink Pro and Papers but they were a bit more than what I needed in the end and just got in the way.
If you’re looking for something like DevonThink that does not get in the way have a look at EagleFiler. There exists an entire thread about the “DevonThink aggravation”, and I’ve posted a short summary of EagleFiler there.
Thank you Tom this is great and I look forward very much to using EagleFlier, I just read through the thread you posted to and look forward to trying out your macros you made for EagleFiler. Always great to learn and know others tried and experienced the same pain I felt when using DevonThink Pro. I just kept thinking I need to give it a better chance and spend more time with it but the non integration with the Finder really was the show stopper and made me wonder why I even purchased in the first place at the extreme cost.
and look forward to trying out your macros you made for EagleFiler
Happy to hear that you want to try my macros, but…
Eagle Filer works perfectly fine without my macros! My macros are pure luxury, they only add some UI comfort. (They do not add functionality or work-arounds for bugs.)
So, if you are new to EagleFiler, my macros may even be confusing and it would perhaps be better to get familiar with EagleFiler (without any macros) first.
Note: You can also choose to set different paths. The important thing is that /usr/local/bin is included, and preferably at the beginning. Otherwise KM does not know where to find the Homebrew-installed tools.
options:
–force overwrite existing output files (synonym: -f)
–skip-if-larger only save converted files if they’re smaller than original
–output file destination file path to use instead of --ext (synonym: -o)
–ext new.png set custom suffix/extension for output filenames
–quality min-max don’t save below min, use fewer colors below max (0-100)
–speed N speed/quality trade-off. 1=slow, 3=default, 11=fast & rough
–nofs disable Floyd-Steinberg dithering
–posterize N output lower-precision color (e.g. for ARGB4444 output)
–strip remove optional metadata (default on Mac)
–verbose print status messages (synonym: -v)
Quantizes one or more 32-bit RGBA PNGs to 8-bit (or smaller) RGBA-palette.
The output filename is the same as the input name except that
it ends in “-fs8.png”, “-or8.png” or your custom extension (unless the
input is stdin, in which case the quantized image will go to stdout).
The default behavior if the output file exists is to skip the conversion;
use --force to overwrite. See man page for full list of options.
AHEM, … sheepish stupid look on my face.
OH, you mean variable, NOT clipboard? I thought you meant clipboard… (not really)
ah, yeah, when I set the VARIABLE, ENV_PATH and NOT the clipboard… a, it worked like it should.
I’ll be crawling under a rock now. =) - LOL.
THANK you for your time, sorry for my mistake.
Have a Blessed day
Has anyone figured out a way to get optimized PNG output from pasteboard to apps? For example, when I copy a screenshot I've found that ImageOptim generally gets a 15-25% lossless size reduction via the pngcrush+PNGOUT. When these are pasted into apps (such as a chat system) directly they always result in unoptimized uploads, which is highly unfortunate... It would be so nice to have an automated optimized in-pasteboard to yield an optimized png output.
