A really annoying thing about Mac OS X is that it saves some things you drag-and-drop to Finder (for example, the cover art in iTunes) as “clipping” files, like “pictClipping” for picture files. People long ago figured out that pictClipping files kept the actual image stashed in the resource fork, which file identifies as a “ms-windows icon resource.”
I haven’t had any luck finding some simple way to batch convert these “icon” files into real images, but as it turns out, these files seem to mostly be real image files, like TIFF, JPEG, or PNG, with some weird header. Someone figured out how to convert these to TIFF, if the image in the pictClipping is a TIFF, and so I used this to write some Automator actions that convert pictClipping images to TIFF, JPEG, or PNG. You can save these workflows as Finder plugins, meaning that you can right-click on any pictClipping file, and try to convert that file to some format.
The workflows:
- Convert pictClipping to JPEG.workflow
- Convert pictClipping to PNG.workflow
- Convert pictClipping to TIFF.workflow
These are a little sucky, because you have to experiment with each one until one of them works (it should be easy enough to write a little meta-workflow that handles all three, but I’m too lazy right now).
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davee | 24-Jun-07 at 7:25 pm | Permalink
it’s up to the application that starts the drag, by the way. the simple behavior is for it to just provide the picture data, and a clipping file results. but if they want to be clever the drag API will tell them that the drop occurred in the finder and they can make an image file instead for you. But the application has to be clever.
in this way, apps can just provide the basics for moving things around and can be savvy but they weren’t required initially to be savvy when the drag API’s were first published.
csm | 25-Jun-07 at 8:51 am | Permalink
Fair enough. It’s still seems silly, though, to bury this data in some obscure file format, *in the resource fork*, where it practically becomes a write-only bit-bucket.
Stefano | 31-Aug-07 at 12:47 am | Permalink
Thank you so much, it was really helpful!
Aj | 08-Oct-07 at 9:42 am | Permalink
For those looking to edit text, picture and Internet clippings in OSX, you might want to checkout ClipEdit (http://www.everydaysoftware.net/clipedit/index.html). It’s a donationware program that comes in quite helpful when working with clippings.
Floyd | 28-Mar-08 at 11:48 am | Permalink
Just copy the clipping so it is in your clipboard, then open up Preview.app and select “File -> New from Clipboard”. Then “File -> Save as…”
Gives you whatever filetype you want.
Peter | 19-Jun-08 at 9:40 pm | Permalink
I “just” dragged the LP image from iTunes into Pages (iWork) then drag the page into iPhoto then dragged em to the Desktop (they were .pict by then), then opened em with Photoshop and saved em as Jpegs. Whew!