Automator - Snow Leopard

Automation as you know in Leopard was pretty much efficient. Its been tweaked further to satisfy users in Snow Leopard. Its now called Services. Its only active when you select relevant files in Finder. First you'll have to create a Service, for it to be displayed in relevant context menus. I'm gonna create a Scale Images Service. Here's how to do it:

Open Automator
Select Service when choosing a template
Add to it the following items from Library in the same order mentioned below:

• Get Specified Finder Items
• Ask For Text (Optional)
• Scale Images

Save the template as Scale Images

If you successfully create that Service, you should see it in context menus when you alternate click on a bunch of images as below:

You should also see these service here, when you have already selected some images:

The above context menu is dependent on the type of file you've selected. An example of what that menu will bring up if you select text in TextEdit:

Well, that's it for today. Hit me up with Automations/Workflows/Services of your own at ashrith@a5hr1th.com !

Visit http://macosxautomation.com/ for more on Automator, Services and AppleScript !
Bonus ! Third Party Photoshop CS1/CS2/CS3 Automator actions
You can buy other third party Automations here

Automator - Rename Files & Label Them

Today's Automator Action: Rename Files & Label Them

You have a shit load of pictures to be renamed. You wanna label them with colors. What do you do ? Automator, to the rescue !

Follow these simple steps and be able to Rename Files and also Label Them:

• Follow the basic steps from the previous Automator post
• Add Rename Finder Items and Label Finder Items from the Automator Library
• Customize them as you want and voila !

Here's a small example:

I have 100 odd pics here in a folder called Party ! I want them to renamed with Party as suffix and numbers as postfixes, beginning from 1. Here's what I did to achieve that:

As you can see from the above screenshots, you can add more than one Automation at the same time depending upon what you want it to do for you.

That's all for now ! Try tweaking that Record button ;)

Automator - Resize Photos

I'm quite sure you guys would have noticed that robotic icon with a pipe in its hand ! That's AUTOMATOR. Its the most useful software there is on Leopard. Batch Processing, that's Automator's forte.

I'll give you some scenarios where you guys have to sit and do a lot of work to get your work done. You have some pictures which you clicked at last night's party. They're all in your camera's native resolution. They're freakin' huge to upload anywhere on the internet ! What and how will you resize them ? Can't think of anything ? Okay, lets begin !

Today's Automator Action: Resize Photos

• Put the pictures into a folder
• Select all the pictures
• Alternate click on any one photo
• Move the cursor to "More"
• Now, move it to "Automator"
• Click on "Create Workflow"

Now that you've done all that, an Automator window should pop up on your screen. You see too many things and you're dazed and confused ! Here's what you need to do again:

• Look toward the left side of the Automator window
• There should be an open drop down called "Library" with names like "Calendar, Contacts..." and so on
• Since you're working on Photos, you need to select the "Photos" sub menu in the Library menu
• Now you see more options to the right of the Library menu
• Select "Scale Images"
• Double click on "Scale Images" after you select it
• Automator will ask you if you want your original photos to be preserved after you scale them
• Depending on your choice select whatever you want
• One more sub menu which itself is called "Scale Images" opens up to the right side of "Scale Images"
• Select the type of scaling you want
• Now select "Run" in the top right corner of the Automator window
• Sit back and relax while Automator processes your images !

Stay tuned for more Automator 101 !