Realmac's new Squash 3

Just wanted to point out that Realmac has a major update for their Squash app coming soon. It does image compression, resizing in bulk, filters and more it seems. It looks quite nice. Thought I’d mention it in case people here hadn’t seen it yet:

I’m curious – what do you all currently use for your image compression needs? Anyone going to be trying out Squash 3?

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I tend to use imageoptim, but have upgraded from Squash 2. Haven’t had much time to play with it yet, or do a detailed comparison, but it does have some nice additional features, with batch capability for watermarking, filters, etc, alongside the compression.

That said, I think they’ve missed an opportunity to allow user-selectable fonts for the watermarks - I’ve messaged Dan to see if that’s something that’s in the pipeline for an update.

Happy to take any specific questions, if anyone has any…

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I will certainly give Squash 3 a “try”. Squash 2 seemed disappointing in that some free services (e.g. tinyPNG) resulted in better compression and quality. If they’ve solved that difference then it becomes more appealing.

I currently use Retrobatch for all my bulk work and it’s wonderful. And very flexible. Unknown to me how well Squash 3 will fare yet … but the initial video looks promising.

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I have an Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop subscription so use Photoshop’s “Save for Web”

Imageoptim and Pixelmator Pro are what I tend to use most. Looking at Squash 3 now - and have been put one to Retrobatch by the good man at Shaking the Habitual…

PhotoBulk and JPGMini.

https://www.jpegmini.com/

Shoot me. I forgot I bought Squash 2 to try it out. Been using Graphic Converter since System 7 days though.

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I have Squash 2 but don’t use it as much as I used to, either using Lightroom/Photoshop or Affinity Photo to batch process resizing images. But I think I’ll be giving the new version a try. Thanks for the tip Adam.

I purchased Squash 3 and have been playing with it. I normally use Retrobatch if I have a lot of images to work on, otherwise Photoshop or Affinity Photo.

Adobe Photoshop or even Preview.

Haven’t checked it out yet, but I don’t think so, the V2 version was good enough for batch conversion, and I personally don’t need the image manipulation features V3.

Does the new version also resize images? (e.g. all images to the same size, if larger, or scale up if smaller?) [Edit: according to site, it does. So that’s a nice add on]

Missed that. Tried it now. Instant buy.
Thanks for mentioning it.

I have Squash 2 but hardly use it. It’s a good app, but since I’m a long time Photoshop user (started with the first release back in the '90) I stick with the save for web function of Photoshop. I use the Batch function for large amounts of images.

Hans

I was offered an early access opportunity but they never sent the email…but did get a survey on whether I liked it or not.

Same here.

First nothing. Then something random. Then an email asking to review it on Twitter. Then an email saying “access” in ten days, then another the next day with a link to buy, that didn’t work.

I’ve kinda given up now. I use Affinty Photo for most stuff, but batch conversions are a bit of a bollox, so was thinking of S3 for that. But reckon I’ll just stick with Photo, or wait till S3 is on general release.

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I had no problems getting the link after purchase. I quite like the upgrade to version 3. I still use Affinity Photo for most of the editing, but to shrink a photo down, and see the results in a side by side panel is very helpful, rather than by trial and error in version 2.

I’ve been using Squash 2 on Mojave and now Squash 3 on Big Sur. The new export menu in Capture Pro 14.3 gives an option to open exported images in a different program so I resize the image smaller in Capture One and then Squash them in Squash. I found there is generally a big difference between resizing the images and squashing them. I don’t think the resizing features are replacements for Squash.

I like how 3 lets you see a before and after view. You used to have to export it first and then do a quick-view between the squashed and unsquashed image to see how they changed. Much faster with 3 since I know right away if squashing it won’t look good and need to run multiple trials to get it right.