Saving files and creating a "macro"

[tinkertool]

Hello, I have a couple newbie questions about saving files:

1. When I try to save a file (hoping to save as .jpg or .gif), those file formats don't seem to be available. Is there a way to get them?
2. I did find the "Export As" command,which does list .jpg and .gif file types (as well as many others). This will work, albeit a little slower, but to reduce disk space usage I am lowering the Quality setting to 50%. I see I can save this setting as a default, and then recall the Saved Setting each time I export (save). Is there a way to automatically select my saved setting as a default to avoid having to go through the "Load Save Settings" step each time?

I also have a question about how to save time when performing the same steps over lots of images.  Does GIMP have something like a "macro" capability where I can save a series of steps and have them all automatically applied with the click of a button? I looked into the "Templates" feature, but that doesn't seem quite right because it doesn't appear to offer all the full set of menu options. 


TIA

[Ofnuts]

For Gimp, you can only "Save" in XCF. A JPG/PNG will not save everything in an image (layer structure, elections, paths...). So all these file types that don't save all the Gimp data are "Export"s (in your favorite word processor, you "save" to DOCX/ODT, and "export" to PDF...).

The default behavior is to save with the initial image quality. If you export a hitherto non-Jeg image, and change the quality from the defautl value, this setting is reused for all subsequent non-Jpeg images.

Saving images with 50% quality is a bad idea. This is a Q90 image resaved at Q50:

   

Disk space is cheap. Keep your images at Q80 or higher. It is easy to degrade the quality, it is impossible to restore it later. If you are tight on disk space, it could be a "less bad" idea to scale down the images to a size that is sill useful (say, 2400px) and export at decent quality. And before you lower the quality, make sure you are using the quartered chroma-subsampling, this reduces the  file size significantly without impacting the image quality as much.

Also, the fact that you don't mention PNG is disturbing because PNG is the format of choice for about all non-photo images (often smaller than JPEG, without any artifacts)? GIF is pretty much relegated to low-quality animations the days.

Last, there is no "macro" in  Gimp. You can write scripts, but this another skill level. There are plugins to perform actions in batcj modes on images, and many non-Gimp utilities that will transform an set of images (from memory XNView, IrfanView...).

[rich2005]

(06-18-2025, 11:09 PM)tinkertool Wrote: Hello, I have a couple newbie questions about saving files:

1. When I try to save a file (hoping to save as .jpg or .gif), those file formats don't seem to be available. Is there a way to get them?  

One of the Gimp fundermentals.  You  only "Save" as a Gimp format .xcf (also compressed formats .xcf.gz..)
This keeps all layers / active selections / text-as-text / guides / various settings so you can go back and start editing where you left off.
The "Export" formats .png / .jpg  are "finished" formats generally flattened into one layer.

Quote:2. I did find the "Export As" command,which does list .jpg and .gif file types (as well as many others). This will work, albeit a little slower, but to reduce disk space usage I am lowering the Quality setting to 50%. I see I can save this setting as a default, and then recall the Saved Setting each time I export (save). Is there a way to automatically select my saved setting as a default to avoid having to go through the "Load Save Settings" step each time?

For jpegs the quality / file size curve is not linear. 100 is still lossy, best is 95 - 85 where there is a substantial reduction in file size.  65 and below, poor quality, not much saving in file size. There is an option to give a file size estimate for jpegs.  There are more recent formats such as webp where you might get better results.
As far as I know the save settings works.

   

Quote:I also have a question about how to save time when performing the same steps over lots of images.  Does GIMP have something like a "macro" capability where I can save a series of steps and have them all automatically applied with the click of a button? I looked into the "Templates" feature, but that doesn't seem quite right because it doesn't appear to offer all the full set of menu options. 

There is no macro facility at the moment. It is on the development timeline for future releases (do not hold your breath)
If you can get all your workflow from the gmic plugin http://www.gmic.eu that has the ability to add used filters to a list for future use (faves)

[tinkertool]

Thanks for the replies, it gives me some things to try out.

I am exporting at 50% because I want to post pictures of items for sale on various websites (Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, etc.) and the resulting images seem much smaller and of acceptable quality. Also I may not be capable of telling the difference -- for example in the airliner photo response above I couldn't really see any difference offhand. You can tell I'm not a graphic artist.

[rich2005]

(06-19-2025, 08:12 PM)tinkertool Wrote: Thanks for the replies, it gives me some things to try out.

I am exporting at 50% because I want to post pictures of items for sale on various websites (Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, etc.) and the resulting images seem much smaller and of acceptable quality. Also I may not be capable of telling the difference -- for example in the airliner photo response above I couldn't really see any difference offhand. You can tell I'm not a graphic artist.

What happens with highly compressed jpeg images are "jpeg compression artefacts"  You can see in Ofnuts example.

   

If the website permits webp format, I would try that.  For example using Ofnuts png image
png =  200 kb   50Q jpeg = 30 kb   80Q webp = 21 kb