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.

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.

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.

1. Open Automator from your apps folder.
2. If a menu pops up asking what you want to do, select Custom.
3. In the Actions list on the far left, click Utilities.
4. In the list just to the right of that, double-click Print Finder Items.
5. The Print Finder Items box will pop-up on the far right of the Automator window.
6. Choose the printer you want to set up to print from the drop-down menu. Don’t worry about those tags underneath the drop-down menu.
7. Go to the File menu and select Save As Plugin…
8. Give it a name (probably something like “print to XYZ printer”, or something like that). Choose Finder from the drop-down menu.
9. That’s it. Now all you have to do is right click on a file in the Finder, scroll down to More>Automator>”name of your printer command”. The file will print.
10. There is no #10, but I like even numbers. If you really want a #10, you could repeat the process for each printer you have, or choose the PDF Printer driver from the list (if you have Acrobat Pro installed) to have a file converted to PDF without opening it, hitting print, and clicking the PDF button in the print dialog box.

I wish there was a way to have the Print option show up at the top level of the Finder’s contextual menu, but I haven’t figured out a way to do it. Still, it’s a much nicer solution than having icons for all your printers scattered on your desktop.

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.