Yahenda

I know, right?! What's worse... As I was tooling around working on this method, I discovered something that makes this whole ordeal even more ludicrous: you can resize the images in your notes already with a simple drag of the corner of a selected image!! ...you just can't make them bigger, only smaller! So the code for quickly resizing images already THERE! Gaah!

Hey JMichael... you are absolutely right! It is ridiculously overcomplicated to set up... I AGREE! ...But the goal was to get the process as close to what most people in the thread seem to be asking for, which is approximately 'right-click image, make thumbnail'. After the setup is done (which I wrote out in full to both expose people to the power and relative simplicity of Automator, like I just was... and to make it available to everyone without having to host it or PM it out to people)... what you end up with (depending on your personal preferences) is right-click, drag, key-combo. I also went to all the trouble to illustrate how important I consider this feature to the usability and workflow of Evernote. Anyone else who wants to contribute to this idea, make suggestions or just throw 2 cents in, please do... Thanks for your input too, JMichael.

After checking this thread periodically for almost 4 years, hoping that Evernote would come around to addressing this design flaw, I have finally built my own work-around. Now, I'm sure there are some involved in this discussion that would object to the term "design flaw", but this thread only exists because this many Evernote users agree with me; that software purported to keep and organize notes that then arbitrarily (or rather, formulaically) misrepresents the contents of those notes, has a flaw in it's design. I don't know a lot about using Apple Automator, but I learned some just for this task... so be warned, if you have problems getting it to work, I may not be able to help so proceed with caution. (Unfortunately, this work-around only works for the desktop Mac Evernote client, but of course, the changes you make will sync to all other platforms.) These instructions seem lengthy and daunting, but they are extremely simple to follow and you should be up and running in less than 10 minutes. 1. Open Automator (located in Applications/Utilities) 2. Under "Choose a type for your document", select 'Service'. 3. In the first pulldown menu shown in the main window, beside "Service receives selected", choose 'image files'. 4. In the "Actions" column on the far left, choose 'Photos' 5. In the column immediately to the right, find the entry for 'scale images' and drag it into the main window. 6. In the box that just appeared in the main window, from the pulldown menu, select 'By Percentage' and type '200' in the text field to the right. (the 200 refers to enlarging the image by 200%, which usually does the trick to force the [curse word] 'largest smallest dimension' algorithm to recognize it, but you can fill in this value with whatever number suits you) 7. Go back to the "Actions" column on the far left and select "Utilities". 8. In the column immediately to the right, find the entry for 'Run AppleScript' and drag it into the main window, below the "Scale Images" item. 9. In the AppleScript window, select the bracketed text, including the brackets : (* Your script goes here *) .... and replace that text with the following: tell application "System Events" to keystroke "o" using command down delay 1 tell application "System Events" to keystroke "a" using command down tell application "System Events" to keystroke "c" using command down tell application "System Events" to keystroke "q" using command down 10. From the same "Utilities" column where you found the "Run AppleScript" item, grab the "Launch Application" item and drag it to the main window below the "Run AppleScript" item. 11. From the "Launch Application" pulldown, select 'Evernote' 12. Grab another "Run AppleScript" from the "Utilities" column, and select the bracketed text and replace it with: delay 1 tell application "System Events" to keystroke "v" using command down 13. Finally, back once more to the "Utilities" column and grab "Move Finder Items to Trash" and drag it into the main window, below that last "Run AppleScript". 14. Save it: go to the File menu at the top, choose 'Save'... after you give it a name (I called mine "Evernote Image Embiggener") it should ask you if you want to install it as a 'Service', yes you do, so do it. ... if it doesn't prompt you to install it as a Service, then just save it to ~/Library/Services, then close Automator and then re-open it and cancel the template selection dialogues until you can select 'open recent' from the file menu... at this point it should offer to install it as a Service. If it still doesn't, well, move forward anyway with your fingers crossed... the worst that will happen is that it just won't work... but it won't wreck your system. Now that the Automator service is in place, you can invoke it from the Finder menu under Services, but I made a keyboard shortcut for it: In the System Preferences, Keyboard, Shortcuts menu... choose Services from the left, your Automator Service will appear under Pictures in the right column... assign a keyboard shortcut ... I used ⎇⌘C (Option - Command - c) ... you can use whatever you like. NOW... here's the magic... 1. since Evernote won't let me use an Automator Service within the application (or I can't figure out what to tweak to make it work like other apps)... you have to take the image you want to use as your note's thumbnail image and drag it to your desktop (or any Finder window) to apply the service. I like to copy the image to the bottom of the note first, so that after it's enlarged, it won't disturb the formatting of the original note: right click the image, select "copy image" (not "copy) and press ⌘ - ↓ to go right to the bottom of the note and paste it. 2. Drag your ideal thumbnail image from the Evernote note to your desktop and make sure it's selected. 3. Run your keyboard shortcut or click Finder, Services and click your Service's name there. DONE! You'll see Preview open for a second and then close, the image you had selected in Evernote will be %200 larger and the file you dragged to your desktop will have been moved to the trash! To recap in brief: 1. Select thumbnail image in note 2. "Copy Image" to the end of the note 3. Drag that image to desktop 4. Run Service (either from Finder, Services menu or by shortcut) Sigh and smile as your world starts to make sense again. This has been "How to Train Your Elephant" by Yahenda

Every once in a while, I stop by this forum to see if any progress has been made in regards to this feature request over the last nearly two and a half years that I've been following it. It's the one missing feature that has kept me from adopting Evernote. This time, I decided to try something... I used the Evernote web clipper to clip the first page from this discusison and add it to my notebook... I used 'Clip Whole Page' rather than 'Clip article' and when I went to my notebook using my browser... guess what the auto-selected thumbnail for the note was... the default blank member avatar. I tried it again with the last page of the discussion thus far... just to see if it would be any different or anymore useful... this time, the mighty algorithm auto-selected... member mprewitt's avatar of a cube floating in blue space. In my notebook's snippets view, the Evernote logo is nowhere to be seen and according to the algorithm, completely non-viable as a choice. ...Now, is there a cleverly written algorithm to select whether this is hilarious, ironic or just sad? (sorry, I just had to ;p ) Still ready to come back to Evernote the moment they impliment user selected thumbnails, Yahenda

So after some confusion, I realized that I had posted my original comments in Evernote for Win and that's what josephavellino was referring to above... so I've re-posted it here both for everyone else's reference and because I'm actually using Evernote for Mac: > > Hello, I am new to Evernote, I just started using it today and the first wall I hit was not being able to change the thumbnails on my notes. Then I came to this forum and read all this stuff about choosing the right algorithm for automatically generating a thumbnail. What puzzles me is: How do you put that much thought into selecting an algorithm for auto-generating an image for a more intuitive note-taking experience... and not consider letting us pick our own? For instance, I'm trying to use EN to compare-shop different audio interfaces for my macbook... a note for each model I'm considering... but the thumbnails are a mess; they show the store logos or ads that also appear on the page but none show the actual item I'm trying to compare. Is my intuition that far-fetched? Is it me? If there's a different, more positive way for me to view this, please let me know. Thanks > > Now, I've searched through the forums extensively for info regarding image selection for thumbnails in the various views (card view, snippet view and the now discontinued thumbnail view) and found many users who are dissatisfied with the presentation of thumbnails, specifically in the card view... not just the fact that they can't control what image gets selected to represent their note, but how the image that is selected for them is cropped. I've also read dlu remark that "the backlog of features we'd like to do is pretty long, so things that aren't going to be widely adopted tend to be de-prioritized." ...So what comes to my mind right away is that the addition of this feature of being able to select your own thumbnail image to represent your note would actually address two problems at once, right? Now that sounds like TWICE the potential feature adoption... is that enough for a re-prioritization? I get that maybe the Evernote team is trying to keep the interface as simple as possible; clean lines, intuitive, not overwhelming the user with too many decisions... but really, what could be simpler and more intuitive than dragging an image from your note to the snippet or card view and have it become the thumbnail? It wouldn't come at the cost of the precious thumbnail auto-selection algorithm... the two features would compliment eachother. P.S. I know listening to people whine about what they're not getting in their free product is tedious at best so... Thanks for your attention! - Yahenda ...Also...Does this thread count as a "feature request" or do we need to make a new one with an official 'feature request' title?

Hello, I am new to Evernote, I just started using it today and the first wall I hit was not being able to change the thumbnails on my notes. Then I came to this forum and read all this stuff about choosing the right algorithm for automatically generating a thumbnail. What puzzles me is: How do you put that much thought into selecting an algorithm for auto-generating an image for a more intuitive note-taking experience... and not consider letting us pick our own? For instance, I'm trying to use EN to compare-shop different audio interfaces for my macbook... a note for each model I'm considering... but the thumbnails are a mess; they show the store logos or ads that also appear on the page but none show the actual item I'm trying to compare. Is my intuition that far-fetched? This forum topic started a year ago, and it's still unchanged, really? Is it me? If there's a different, more positive way for me to view this, please let me know. Thanks