Creating a Simple Mac Workflow for Posting Blog Images
Blogs look better with nice in-post images, just admit it. Yes, content is king, but pure text without some eye candy is just plain boring. Continually adding images though, from a blogger’s perspective, can be a real pain, from finding them to editing to ensuring fit and finish. To keep things simple, here is my workflow:
1. Find the Image
If you have an expense account and are looking for solid rights to generally high quality images, go over to www.istockphoto.com and search to your heart’s delight. There are some wonderful images for incredibly reasonably prices. However, thanks to Flickr’s fantastic use of Creative Commons, and the Advanced Search feature (check the CC search option towards the bottom), finding legally usable, high quality, and relevant imagery for your everyday blog posts can be fast and easy.
Just *always* remember to check the type of CC license, and ensure you provide proper attribution to give the photography credit for their work.
For screen caps and shots, the easiest tool I’ve found is Grab, which comes with OSX (search for it in Spotlight). Add this handy utility to your Dock.
2. Understand Your Layout
Figure out how wide your main blog column is, so you know the max image width. An easy and fast way to do this is by using the Firebug extension for Firefox. Right click somewhere over some text in one your blog posts, select Inspect Element, and then look at the bottom right window. Select Layout, and look at the first number (e.g. 520 x 190) in the center box. That *should* be the pixel width of your main blog content column. Your mileage may vary.
3. Use ImageWell Templates for fast editing
I highly recommend ImageWell for fast image editing on a Mac (and no, that’s not an affiliate link). It may cost $20 or so, but it’s well worth it and saves you from trying to string something together with iPhoto or firing up that beastly overkill known as PhotoShop. Open ImageWell, drag your saved image into its window, click “edit” and resize/crop the image to your desired width.
If you use full column width images on every post – which makes things much easier by obviating the need for text wrap, IMO – you only need to do this once by hand in ImageWell. Set up the max width, ad a border if you like, then select “Add Template” and name it. From then on, every time you edit a photo in ImageWell, just select “File > Templates > yourtemplatename” and done. Your image will be resized, border applied, etc.
4. Upload and enjoy!
You can either use the handy “Send To” feature in ImageWell to FTP the image directly to your blog’s content folder, or use something like WordPress’ image gallery upload feature to get the image where you need it.
Once you get the hang of it, the longest part of the process will be fretting over which image to actually use. The download/edit/upload process should take mere seconds, and you’re on your way to blogging bliss. Good luck!
Photo within the screen shot is by vernhart on Flickr via CC License. Screenshot itself taken of ImageWell during a sample editing process.
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