Image Workflow

Apps gain new capabilities through updates. Our preferences change, task requirements shift, and workflows evolve right along with them. It pays to periodically reevaluate the tools and methods we rely on. As a writer and blogger, I go through a surprising number of images every day. My goal is simple: images should be optimized for file size, renamed intelligently, and land exactly where I need them for current projects. After 24 hours, they should be archived–still accessible, but no longer cluttering my active workspace.

Start with Downloads

Clotski is a menu bar utility for browsing, tagging, renaming, and editing metadata for images in user-specified folders–most often Downloads, Screenshots, and project folders. Its superpower is the ability to automatically save images from your clipboard to a location you define in the app’s settings. In my setup, copied images are saved as JPGs directly into the Downloads folder.

NameQuick Steps In

NameQuick is a powerful automation tool that has improved significantly since I first started using it. Beyond AI-assisted renaming, it can move, tag, add comments to, archive, or trash images based on rules you define.

In my setup, NameQuick evaluates images in Downloads. Screenshots are renamed based on their content and the app that created them, with "Screenshot" appended to the filename. Once renamed, the files are moved into the folder where my current project files live. I use CleanShot X for screenshots for many reasons, but especially for how well it integrates with Raycast, ExtraBar, and CirMenu.

Other images follow a similar path: they’re given short, descriptive filenames and moved into the same project folder.

Optimization

There’s no reason to work with image files that take up more disk space than necessary. For that reason, I use Clop to automatically optimize every image I work with, unless there’s a rare and specific reason not to. Clop watches the project folder and, when a new image appears, runs a process to reduce its file size. Its interface also makes it easy to upload files to cloud services, send images to an editor, compare diffs against existing images, and handle a handful of other related tasks.

Cleanup with Hazel

Most images in this setup exist for an immediate purpose: a blog post or a document I’m actively working on. By the next day, I usually don’t need them anymore. To handle that, I use a Hazel rule that moves any file older than 24 hours into an archive folder. From there, another Hazel rule permanently deletes those files after 90 days.