Looking for a basic image editor with one special feature

[GJCAG]

Hello! First post as a roughly 1 year old switcher. After my 5 year old 15 inch IBM ThinkPad died last summer I decided to get a 17 inch MacBook Pro. One of the best purchases I've ever made! Anyway, here's my question:

Cropping images to a precise pixel dimension is something I do numerous times per day. My current workflow, which I perform in the built in Preview app, involves importing new images from my clipboard, then thanks to a hotkey I setup I quickly set the proper width of said image, then I create a selection box that has to then be manually dragged until it's an exact number of pixels high, hit the crop hot key, hit save, select JPG, and boom, I'm done.

I'm looking for an application that would automate some of these tasks. First, if there's a terminal command or something I can do to make Preview want to save images in JPG as default rather than PNG, that would be a lifesaver! But on to my main request: I'd absolutely love it if there was an app out there where I could hit a hotkey and then have a selection box of a a custom set number of pixels tall and wide appear on the image currently open. From that point on I could position the selection box where I want to, crop it, and then save it as a JPG file.

Thanks in advance! Freeware preferred, but I don't mind spending too much money. Please don't tell me to buy Photoshop, that's far too advanced, and costly, for my needs.

 

[BrickbookPro]

Hello! First post as a roughly 1 year old switcher. After my 5 year old 15 inch IBM ThinkPad died last summer I decided to get a 17 inch MacBook Pro. One of the best purchases I've ever made! Anyway, here's my question:

Cropping images to a precise pixel dimension is something I do numerous times per day. My current workflow, which I perform in the built in Preview app, involves importing new images from my clipboard, then thanks to a hotkey I setup I quickly set the proper width of said image, then I create a selection box that has to then be manually dragged until it's an exact number of pixels high, hit the crop hot key, hit save, select JPG, and boom, I'm done.

I'm looking for an application that would automate some of these tasks. First, if there's a terminal command or something I can do to make Preview want to save images in JPG as default rather than PNG, that would be a lifesaver! But on to my main request: I'd absolutely love it if there was an app out there where I could hit a hotkey and then have a selection box of a a custom set number of pixels tall and wide appear on the image currently open. From that point on I could position the selection box where I want to, crop it, and then save it as a JPG file.

Thanks in advance! Freeware preferred, but I don't mind spending too much money. Please don't tell me to buy Photoshop, that's far too advanced, and costly, for my needs.

You said don't suggest photoshop but, I don't know if you had thought of Photoshop elements (Cheaper than the full version but has many of the same features).

There is also GIMP which is more advanced but free and could probably do what you're trying to do.

 

[brianbauer04]

You said don't suggest photoshop but, I don't know if you had thought of Photoshop elements (Cheaper than the full version but has many of the same features).

There is also GIMP which is more advanced but free and could probably do what you're trying to do.

GIMP definitely does what he wants. You can set the selection rectangle to be a specific size and then it will always default to a selection rectangle of that size.

 

[GJCAG]

Thanks everyone, will give it a try! Any other suggestions besides GIMP?

 

[jbg232]

There's also pixelmator (mac app store), it gets rave reviews but I've never used it, I'm a photoshop guy.

 

[psxguru]

I used to use Imagewell for quick crops...

http://xtralean.com/IWOverview.html

 

[arjen92]

Check automator, it comes with your mac. See if it can automate some of the stuff you want to do.