Reducing size on disk / changing file type—of screenshot attachments

[omnibob]

While looking at the Attachments (list) window, I noticed I have close to 200 TIFF attachments (in notes). (A few are over 10MB; the average size is maybe 5MB.) Their name is “PastedGraphic.tiff”.

One of the 5MB attachments is about 1,000 x 1,000 pixels; the viewable size in OmniFocus is just fine, so I’m thinking I’m after a .png format to reduce size on disc, but not to reduce the x/y pixels.

Using PNG format rather than TIFF

All the screenshots I grabbed in TurboTax (the app; not the web version) (using option-command-shift-4 to define the boundaries). A few other attachments are also TIFF; the rest are .PNG. I don’t know if TurboTax caused the screenshots to be TIFF (vs. PNG, which I’ve read is the default format for screenshots in macOS), or it I first pasted in Preview for further x/y refinement, and then used the modified version to paste in the note.

Any ideas on how to get screenshots that are PNG?

Converting existing TIFF files to PNG

For the existing TIFF files, I’m wondering what kind of automation I could use to convert them to PNG, and then insert that format back into the same note.

Something like?:

• Cut the screenshot from the note. I only seem to be able to select all the contents of notes, not just the attachment, and this won’t work, because there is often text in the note (and/or another screenshot attachment) in the note.

• Run automation to convert the image from TIFF to PNG, place in the clipboard, paste in the note.

When I manually opened a 12MB TIFF in Preview and exported as the default (highest resolution) JPG. The resulting size was 400KB, which is just fine.

[martinewski]

Take a look at the Clop app, by the lowtechguys.com

[taglia]

Thank you @martinewski, I didn’t know Clop and it looks quite handy!

This said, I think the default format for screenshot on macOS is PNG. @omnibob, maybe you changed it to TIFF in the past (or, possibly, some app that you installed did?).

AFAIK, you can only change the format from the terminal, but it’s a simple command: you can check this article on the official Apple community site. While you change it, you can even select JPG if you want smaller files.

Hope this helps.

[omnibob]

I do use Terminal, but I have never changed the default image format for screen snapshots.

I just grabbed a screenshot from TurboTax and pasted in OF, and the result was PNG. I also pasted the screenshot into Preview, and the result is PNG, and after cropping in Preview, copying and pasting into OF, it remains PNG, which makes sense.

It should have occurred to me that (in macOS) cntrl-cmd-shift-4 would not result in differing image format screen captures dependent on the application the screen grab ‘came’ from; it’s just screen info, after all.

I’m not sure how I ended up with those TIFF attachments, but it’s good to know I’m getting PNG results in my testing now.

thanks