Automator is Apple's new OS X Tiger Applescript application for developing customized automatic "workflows". This tool represents a revolution in personal computer productivity. Automator is especially useful for the digital photographer who wishes to spend less time in front of a computer and more time taking pictures.
An Automator "workflow" is a collection of simple Applescript "actions" that link together to form a sequence of steps that act on files. Apple supplies a number of actions that control all of Apples applications like the Finder, iTunes, iPhoto, etc... Many third party applications are Applescriptable and various Automator Actions can often be downloaded for free from Apple at:
The digital photographer can create a workflow that:
- downloads camera files
- renames
- applies metadata
- applies camera raw settings
- converts to DNG
- duplicates files for back up
- moves files into an iView Media Pro catalog
All done automatically!
The main adavantage of Automator over other batch operation software like (Photoshop Actions) is that you are not limited to one single software application to achieve your production results. With a little imagination and planning you can create complex processing operations utilizing several software packages.
To get you started I've created a simple Copy-Rename-Duplicate workflow "app" that is useful for downloading files off a camera card. In practice, you simply drag your camera files to the "InTake_CR2Files.app" icon (it looks like the little robot at the top of this page) and it will automatically download the files to a folder named "CameraFiles", rename them and duplicate them into another Folder named "CameraFilesBackup".
Before you run the workflow you need to open the .app in Automator and change some of the naming parameters to match your needs. You also need to create the two folders on the desktop. Ideally the back up folder should be on a different hard drive than the "CameraFiles" folder. I've created two different Workflows - one for Canon 1DS mkII and another for FujiS3 cameras that differ in the naming convention used. The RAW format really doesn't matter but the way each camera names the files on the card does. Either way you can edit the naming "Actions" to suit your needs. Download the files here:
I've also prepared a more detailed PDF Tutorial that shows how I built each Workflow in Automator and you can download that here:
Here are a few links with more Automator resources:
http://www.completedigitalphotography.com/
http://www.automatedworkflows.com/automator/actions.html
http://www.iview-multimedia.com/blog/weblog.php?id=P144
I hope you enjoyed this material. The techniques outlined here represent just the tip of the iceberg. Automatoris a very deep application and it may seem more complicated that it really is. If all this seems a little overwhelming, take a break, Work on your workflow slowly and test often. Good luck!
