Tim Flight

According to /Library/Receipts it looks like Installed Mac OS 10.4 just about 10 months ago. Today I created my first Automator workflow. I really liked the idea of Automator and how it is basically a drag and drop version of AppleScript. However I never really found a good use for it until now. Maybe I’m just good at either automating tasks already, or good at eliminating redundant tasks.
Over at the Beech Aero Club the photo displayed near the top left of the content is randomly selected each time the page is loaded. Members submit photos to me for inclusion. I would typically drag the photo from Mail.app onto the PhotoShop icon in the Dock. Then in PhotoShop resize the photo to the standard size, save as a JPEG, then open Transmit, SFTP to the server, change to the directory that pulls the images, then upload. This looks like a good task for Automator.

The process itself only takes a minute or two, but there are several steps. I did create a saved action in PhotoShop, and even made a dropplet, but Automator allows you to automate the entire process.

The Automator workflow only has two actions, ‘Scale Images’ and ‘Upload Files’. The upload action comes as part of Transmit. In the Scale Images action I set the size I would like the images resized to. In the Upload Files action I specify which directory on which server I want to upload the files to.

Now when I receive a photo from a member I simply right-click on the photo and select my action from the Automator menu. Presto, everything happens by itself!

Now if only I could create workflows that login to websites, retrieve information, etc…..

This entry was posted on Monday, January 23rd, 2006 at 3:43 pm and is filed under Computer Technology. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.