N.b. the labels on the following pictures are in German. In the text I put the English names.

Create a service in the Automator App

The first step is to start the Automator App (search it with cmd + space) and create a new document:

Now select “Service“:

In the first step in the automation process change at “Service receives selected” the “Image Files” option:

Now, on the left side, choose “Files and Folders” then “Get Specified Finder Items” and drag it to the right side:

As the same way add “Photos” -> “Scale Images” as another step in the workflow:

If you want to overwrite the original picture select “Don’t Add“. If you want to copy the original picture, select “Add” to create a copy before to resize it. I selected “Don’t Add“:

Change the desideret output resolution. I set it to 1920 px. This is a Full HD resolution:

Now save it:

And give a name like:

Test it with a single image and a lot of images

I have an image with the size of 4592 x 3056 px. It takes 6.7 MB of disk space:

Now I right click it, select “Services” and “Resize to 1920px“. This is the previously created automation service:

Automator resize it automatically in the background. You only see quickly this icon in the menu bar:

The result is a picture with the size of 1920 x 1277 px and only 626 KB of disk space:

The same can be done also for many pictures. I have a folder containing 75 pictures. The size is 404.9 MB:

Open the folder, select all pictures (cmd + a), right-click, go to “Services” and “Resize to 1920px“:

It takes about 20 seconds to resize all pictures (75). Here is the result (90% less disk space consumption!):

Congratulations! Now you should be able to resize your images

My Environment

Actually I’m using the following components:

• MacBook Pro 15″
• Windows 10 PC with two 4K Monitors
• Synology Diskstation DS214 play

Set up the Synology Cloud Station

The first thing to do is to set up the Synology Diskstation as a Cloud Station. This is really simple because on the Synology you only need to install the package “Cloud Station” and enable it. A full tutorial with the instructions how to do it is here to find: Synology PC/MAC Cloud Station.

If you have another NAS you need to check in Google how to set it up correctly. Also for Dropbox, OneDrive you will find a guide. The process is quite the same. (N. B. for online clouds the disk space is limited (for example Dropbox has 2 GB). If you need more space (probably you will) you need to buy a subscription (normally about 100$/year). In this case you need to check if it is better to buy a NAS (like Synology, QNAP, etc.) solution with more space and without recurring costs.

Move the Lightroom Library

After the synchonisation between Mac <=> Synology <=> PC is working the last step is to move the Lightroom Library to the Synology synchronisation folder. In my setup I have synchronised the Synology Cloud Client with the following local folders:

• Windows: C:\Users\<Username>\Synology
• Mac: /users/<Username>/Synology

So, all the files contained in the Synology folder are synchronized. In the Synology folder I have created a new folder “Lightroom” where I put the Lightroom catalog and the pictures data.

The last step is to start Lightroom and under “File -> Open Catalog” select the Lightroom Catalog from the “Synology -> Lighroom” folder. You might also need to update the folder containing the pictures data. To do this mark the Folder and then select “Update folder location…”, like this:

Et voilà, the two computers are syncing the data.

Conclusion

I’m working with the synchronisation between Mac and PC since some days and it seems to be all fine. If you don’t have the possibility to have a central storage like the Synology you can also synchronize the data directly between the computers with BitTorrent. I haven’t testet it so far but it should also work fine. If you are intrested search in Google, there are many tutorials how to do it.