Automator – The Graphic Mac

Free Automator scripts for Apple’s new Photos app

This Automator Action collection for Apple’s new Photos app in Mac OS X Yosemite makes your photography workflow a much more efficient and smoother process. In particular, I love the Import image into a specific Album action file. This allows me to quickly add desktop wallpapers and other images I’ve acquired online to a specific Photos album without actually going through the process manually.

There are a ton of other fantastic Automator Actions available at MacOSXAutomation. Be sure to check them all out to see if there’s something else you can use.

Apple | Mac

Batch rename files for free with Automator

Automator If you’re willing to cough up $20, Publicspace.net offers a great solution in the form of A Better Finder Rename. If you need to do this kind of thing routinely, it’s worth the money.

But you can also do this for free with Apple’s Automator found in your Applications folder. Macworld’s Christopher Breen shows you how in this article.

Apple | Mac

Automatically mount an AirPort-attached USB drive with Automator

Manually mounting a USB hard drive attached to your AirPort isn’t terribly difficult, but it can be a real nuisance. Chris Breen has an excellent article over at Macworld to help you automatically mount USB drives attached to your airport using Automator.

Apple | Mac

Using Automator to batch rename files

Often you might find you have a folder containing hundreds of files, and you want to rename them all. Obviously, you don’t want to do this manually, it would take forever. You could download a shareware application to do the job, but that’ll cost you. Luckily you can use Automator to make the process more efficient. Mac OSX Tips has a quick tutorial to show you how to batch rename files using an Automator workflow, and it won’t cost you a dime.

Apple | Mac

Add a right-click Print Document option to OSX contextual…

Apple Automator If you’re familiar with Windows, you know you can print a document from the desktop simply by right-clicking on it and choosing the print document option. If I recall, we had that option on the Mac back in OS9 and earlier. While we have Desktop printers, I don’t care for having more icons sitting on my Desktop. I also don’t care to have them in my Dock, so the drag & drop method is out too. Thankfully, there’s an easy way to get OSX to have a Print Document option in the contextual menus just a right-click away. Read more “Add a right-click Print Document option to OSX contextual menus” →

Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop Action Pack for Automator

If you’re a Photoshop user running Mac OSX 10.4 or 10.5, you should be taking advantage of Apple’s Automator. Automator allows you to string a series of “actions” together to create a workflow. Think of them as shortcuts. The Photoshop Action Pack 3.7 provides 90 Actions which allow you to control a huge amount of Photoshop functions, and execute complex batch operations you just can’t do with Photoshop’s built-in Actions.

The following actions are provided in the new Action Pack:

Add Empty Adjustment Layer	Flip Canvas
Add Graphic Watermark	Gaussian Blur
Add Layer	Glass
Add Watermark	HDR Merge
Arbitrary Rotate	Hue/Saturation
Assign Color Profile	Invert
Assign Custom Profile	Load Selection
Assign Epson 2200 Profile	Maximum/Minimum
Assign Epson 2400 Profile	Mono Gaussian Noise
Auto Color	Motion Blur
Auto Contrast	NTSC Colors
Auto Levels	Ocean Ripple
Bleach Bypass	Open as Raw Data
Change Bit Depth	Open
Change Mode	Paint Daubs
Change Pixel Aspect Ratio	Photo Filter
Change Resolution	Pinch
Channel Mixer	Polar Coordinates
Clouds	Posterize
Color Balance	Purge
Convert to Profile	Radial Blur
Copy Data to IPTC	Reduce Noise
Copy IPTC to Spotlight Comments	Render
Crop	Resize Canvas
Deinterlace	Resize Image
Desaturate	Resize to File Size
Deselect	Resize to X by 10%
Despeckle	Restore Original File List
Diffusion	Ripple
Do Action	Scale Image
Duplicate Current layer	Set Blending Mode of Current Layer
Dust and Scratches	Shadow/Highlight
Edit IPTC Info	Sharpen Edges
Exposure (CS2 only)	Sharpen More
Filter by Aspect Ratio	Smart Blur
Filter by Bit Depth	Smart Sharpen (CS2/CS3 only)
Filter by Color Mode	Sphereize
Filter by EXIF	Strip Extra Channels
Filter by File Type	Swap Colors
Filter by IPTC	Threshold
Filter by Orientation	Trap
Filter by Size	Trim
Fit Image	Twirl
Flatten Document	Unsharp Mask
	Use Currently Open Documents

Version 3.7 is fully compatible with PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. In addition to the action bundle, an assortment of sample workflows is provided. The included 73-page manual gives you a reference for all of the included actions, as well as an introduction to using Automator, and strategies for building Photoshop workflows. The Photoshop Action Pack is free, but donations are accepted via PayPal.