Tiff to JPG or PNG converter

Nothing dubious intended. It simply isn't possible for a FILE to exist on the clipboard. Using your own approach, I save a small TIFF (1.5 MB) as a highly compressed JPEG (135 KB). Since Photoshop uses its own clipboard, I then opened that JPEG in Preview. Did a Command+A followed by Command+C and ran your script. Here's the result.

First of all, I copied the data from a JPEG I had opened, not a TIFF. There are no other records. What you see is followed by a ream of hexadecimal values down to where it ends. So why does the record say TIFF when it started as a JPEG? The only logical explanation is that the data was, because it has to be, converted to an uncompressed state when placed on the clipboard. Not doing so would make the image impossible to paste anywhere else as an image. Calling it a TIFF is also meaningless since a TIFF is a file.

And yes, I have done programming. A very long time ago, but I have done it.

OK - see what you mean now. This e-mail and TIFF issue from copy/paste clipboard buffer is an ongoing religious debate apparently -- see the discussion at The clipboard converts JPG data to TIFF for lots of info and points about this topic. There are others as well.

If pasting images into Mail as PNG would help any you can do that with an app called Skitch -- it's free from the App Store. So you would use Skitch to do the screen copy into the clipboard, then Command-V in Mail would paste it as a PNG. Another free app called Monosnap will do JPG pastes into Mail.

Good luck.....

How do I set up an automator? I have changed the "screen shot" and command shift 4 to save as jpg by using the terminal -- but from clipboard it still pastes as tiff. How do I change that to copy/paste as jpg without having to save it?

Thanks

TIFF, JPEG, PNG and other formats are file types. The clipboard is just pixel data of the image. It's not a TIFF or any other file format, and doesn't have one until you save it somewhere. Whatever image editor you're using to save the pasted data is defaulting to TIFF when you then go to save the image as a file. The clipboard can't decide that.

I am not saving it at all -- like you said, when I "save" it to the desktop, it saves as jpg. But when I copy & then paste (without saving it anywhere), it pastes into Mail as tiff. When I drag it to the desktop, it is still a tiff. So if it is just a pixel data, is there a way to change mail to default tiff to jpg? Does that make sense? I don't want to have to save every clipboard image before I paste it.

If you're talking about screenshots - you can set what format they get saved to using the "defaults" command in a Terminal window (Terminal.app is located in the /Applications/Utilities folder). For example to set the type to jpg (or png or tiff or pdf or not sure what others are possible - perhaps someone knows all the types that can be used):

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type "jpg"

If you want to change the location the screencaptures get saved to:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location "~/Desktop/Screenshots"

then you need to

killall SystemUIServer

good luck..........

Thanks, dot.com. I have already done all that. It works great. I am talking about " command control shift 4 " to copy something onto the clipboard (without saving it anywhere) in order to paste it elsewhere. When I paste it into Mail, it pastes as tiff and most others cannot see the tiff I sent. When I paste it into Word, & then I drag it to the desktop, it shows as a picture clipping. I would like to be able to paste it as a jpg. Is there something in terminal that can do this?!

Okay, you're not saving the clipboard image yourself, but Mail is defaulting to the TIFF format when it embeds the pasted image as a file attachment. If there are no preferences in Mail to set the file type it saves pasted images as, then you're going to have to paste the clipboard data into a different app first so you can save it from there as a JPEG, then drag and drop the saved image into Mail.

Either in Applescript or Automator -- there is a sample program to take all items in a folder and convert them from photoshop to jpeg - by automatically opening them in photoshop then saving the file as jpeg to another folder.

Possible there may be something to do the same with preview.

Thanks dot.com. I just downloaded monosnap - but I cannot get it to open with Safari or Chrome. I also found Grab but it saves things as tiff -- it's just easier for me to " command shift 4 " and save the jpg to my desktop & drag to the email, than it is to have to go through a third-party program, convert it and then drag and drop. I (personally) find no usefulness in tiff for the daily emails I send. I wish there were a toggle that apple would set up -- so those who are committed to tiff could use it -- and those "amateurs" like me could send screen shots via email with jpg. Many other email programs cannot read png either so jpg is all I've got!

Happy new year!

Monosnap and Skitch are apps - you don't open them with Safari or Chrome after you download and install them with the App Store - then you just run em (the App Store put them in your /Applications folder) and then use them to do the screen captures and then Command-V to paste the image into Mail or whatever else you want.

Each of these apps has it's own shortcut to do the screen capture - which I think you can customize if you want - just look at the Preferences for each and it should be obvious what you need to do.

Skitch will allow you to put PNG images in Mail messages

Monosnap will allow you to do JPG or PNG images in Mail messages

Isn't this what you want to do?

Good luck

Why not take the screen shot from within Preview - then SAVE AS - you can change the file type to jpeg or pdf.

Its File menu - take screen shot -- unless of course apple removed it - as it does exist in Snow leopard.

Anyway tried it out - took nice shot of screen and save it as jpeg (default is tiff) worked fine.

Then you are still creating all these extra steps. Changing things through terminal and just auto-saving the screenshot to the desktop (easy to find that way) is a one-step jpg. Then you drag to email. I was hoping to just take the screen shot, save to clipboard and paste without having to save it. But the 2 step is better than the 3 step ;-) at this point. I am using Yosemite now -- it's still the same thing.

The fastest would be the one step method dot.com suggested. You install either of the third party apps, Monosnap or Skitch, then when you paste into Mail, it overrides Mail's default of TIFF and creates the attachment as a JPEG.

Actually I just found that one today - - generally use grab for the screen shot because its just saving some info for myself.

I think thats why people start getting very frustrated with software updates and changes -- it "I haven't learned all of this yet".