Apr 27 2009
Optimize Your DeliciousExport
Brought to you by: James
Clearly, the problem with DeliciousExporter is that it exports your images as their original size and uses CSS to resize them in your browser. Why not resize these images before uploading? Why not indeed…. The following are the exact steps that I took to shrink my library from 13.8mb to 2.6mb.
1. Download and purchase EasyBatchPhoto ($18). Why purchase? Because you get a very ugly watermark thrown on every image if you don’t. Why EasyBatchPhoto? Because I’ve tried the rest and they just don’t work. Skip to step 1a, right after step 5, for special instructions on using Automator instead of EasyBatchPhoto.
2. Backup Delicious Library. You can do this by copying ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/ to an external hard disk or burn a CD with that directory.
3. Now, open ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/Images/ on your hard disk and delete every folder but “Plain Covers”.
4. Open your newly purchased EasyBatchPhoto. Choose whatever destination you want, set the scaling to “Stretch to fit” at 113×155 pixels, choose your desired scaling quality, set the format to “JPEG”, the quality to “80″, and make sure that “Preserve EXIF” is checked. At this point, you may want to add all of this as a preset. Why 113×155 pixels? Because that’s the size of the small, plastic-like image that will be displayed over your images in your newly exported library. Consequently, that is the size that the original images would have been resized to. Your settings should similar to the screenshot below.
5. Find your “Plain Covers” folder at ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/Images/Plain Covers/ and drag it into the small box on the top-left corner of EasyBatchPhoto. Continue through the dialogue box and your photos will begin to convert. Move onward to step 6.
Use Automator instead of EasyBatchPhoto
1a. If you have Mac OS X v10.4.x, you can use Automator instead of EasyBatchPhoto for steps 1-5.
2a. Duplicate the “Plain Covers” folder in ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/ and drag this duplicate folder to your desktop.
3a. Launch Automator, select the contents of the Plain Covers duplicate, and drag them into the Workflow area.
4a. From the action area, select Preview/Scale Images and make sure that it occurs after the retrieval of the image files. Set this action to “To Size (pixels): 155″. Your settings should similar to the screenshot below.
5a. Execute the workflow and save it for later use.
6. Replace ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/Images/Plain Covers/ with your newly created “Plain Covers” folder.
7. Launch Delicious Library. You will be shocked by how pixelated your cover images are, but that’s why you made a backup of your library in step 2. Now, quit Delicious Library.
8. Launch DeliciousExporter. Make sure that “Export images” is checked, enter your desired email address, and export your library.
9. Once your library is exported, open one of the .html files in your browser. Your cover images are no longer pixelated. That’s because they are exactly the size that they would have been resized to via the CSS.
10. Congratulations, your exported library is now as optimized as it could get (unless you lower the image quality any further). You may now upload your library and restore Delicious Library by replacing ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/ with your backup copy.
Just for fun, here’s what mine looks like:
I haven’t played with this extensively yet but apparently Apple has released an update for AppleTV that not only addresses a security issue that sits squarely in the “…as if” category, but also adds Genius playlist support.