Drag-and-drop script to quickly resize any image

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My friend (and primary author of the two Unix chapters in the new Woof Book) Kirk McElhearn was looking for a simple way to resize images for his Kirkville website. Although there are probably 1,500 apps out there that resize images, none seemed to do exactly what he wanted: drag an image onto an app, have it scale it to a predefined size, then save the file with a new name. He didn't want to have to launch Photoshop or Graphic Converter, nor specify the parameters every time; he just wanted a fast and easy resizer to his chosen dimensions (120 pixels wide by the required scale length).

Being the AppleScript expert that I am (ha!), I quickly chose the "phone a real expert" option and sent an email to Sal Soghoian, who was kind enough to respond with some very elegant resizing code. I then took a shot at adding the requisite file handling bits, but again my abilities with AppleScript turned Sal's work into a muddled mess. So I again deferred to an expert. This time, it was Doug Adams, of Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes fame (300+ free iTunes AppleScripts). Between the two of them, the end result was a very effective AppleScript. Read the rest of the hint for the details...

Open Script Editor, and create the following new script:

Source: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2004092804461334

-- save in Script Editor as Application
-- drag files to its icon in Finder

on open some_items
	repeat with this_item in some_items
		try
			rescale_and_save(this_item)
		end try
	end repeat
end open


to rescale_and_save(this_item)
	tell application "Image Events"
		launch
		set the target_width to 600
		-- open the image file
		set this_image to open this_item
		
		set typ to this_image's file type
		
		copy dimensions of this_image to {current_width, current_height}
		if current_width is greater than current_height then
			scale this_image to size target_width
		else
			-- figure out new height
			-- y2 = (y1 * x2) / x1
			set the new_height to (current_height * target_width) / current_width
			scale this_image to size new_height
		end if
		
		tell application "Finder" to set new_item to ¬
			(container of this_item as string) & "scaled." & (name of this_item)
		save this_image in new_item as typ
		
	end tell
end rescale_and_save

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