This is a step-by-step guide to creating an Automator Quick Action workflow for Mac users that will perform a number of actions onto a digital photo to make it “blog-ready.” Quick Actions are workflows created in Automator that can be accessed by right-clicking (or CTRL-clicking) a file in Finder, then selecting the appropriate Quick Action from the pop-up menu. See below.

This particular Quick Action does several things:

• it copies the selected photo to a new folder (preserving the original)
• it resizes the photo to a size appropriate for a blog (1920 pixels on its longest side)
• it removes all of the photo’s EXIF data, including location
• it uses Siri’s Alex voice to announce the above process was performed.

Here are the steps:

1. Lauch Automator

2. Click “New Document”

3. In the workflow panel on the right, the settings are as follows: Workflow receives current “image files” in “Finder”.

4. From the left Actions sidebar, select Photos library and drag Scale Images to the workflow at right. Automator will prompt you to preserve your original image by copying it first. Choose that option, select a location for your resized image; for instance, I use a folder called “Blog Photos” in the “Pictures” folder.

5. Select the scale for your image. I chose a size of 1920 pixels, which will be applied to the longest side of the image.

6. From the Utilities library, select “Run Shell Script” and drag it to the right. Shell should be “/bin/bash” but this script should work in any shell. Pass inputs “as arguments.” Type in the script as follows:

 for f in "$@"
do
/usr/local/bin/exiftool -all= -CommonIFD0= "$f"
done

7. From the Text library in the left pane, drag “Get Specified Text” to the right workflow as the next step. In the text block, type, “Image resized, privatized, and moved” or something similar.

8. Drag Speak Text from the Text library as the last step. Choose a voice. I chose Alex.

That’s it! Now save your workflow. I called mine Blog Resize. Now that workflow will be a Quick Action option whenever you right-click on a digital image in Finder.

Quick Actions by default are saved in Users/[username]/Library/Services. Other workflows are saved in Users/[username]/Library/Workflows.