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| Posted by Administrator (admin) on Mar 04 2008 |
Review of Automator for Mac OS X.5 Leopard: Learn Automator the Quick and Easy Way, A Visual Quickstart Guide
by Ben Waldie.
Computers are supposed to make things easier, right? Well that's the theory anyway. But how often do we end up performing repetitive tasks, boring repetitive tasks like renaming your new photos with something meaningful rather than DSCN0121.JPG? There is a better way.
Enter Automator, Apple's automation tool for the rest of us. We got a tease of what Automator could do with OS X.4. With the release of OS X.5 or Leopard, Automator has matured into a useful and pretty flexible tool. What's Automator, you ask? And, isn't it hard to use?
Ben Waldie has your answer in his new book, Automator for Mac OS X. 5 Leopard: Learn Automator the Quick and Easy Way! a Visual Quickstart Guide from Peachpit Press.
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In this straightforward how-to book we are led by the hand through the creation of useful Automator actions in a step-by-step manor. As with all Visual Quickstart Guides, the lessons are presented in small chunks with lots of screenshots to illustrate each step. Think of it as an Automator cookbook. If you work through even half of it you should be able to "amaze your friends and family" with what you can train your Mac to do 'automagically.' I'm a big fan of the Visual Quickstart Series and this book seems to meet the series' usual high quality and ease of use.
I built a workflow that takes the photos from my SD card, strips off the camera's useless file names and replaces them with today's date. Then it sends the photos to iPhoto. So instead of DSCN0121.JPG I can import 3-7-08-03.JPG into iPhoto. It's still not pretty but having all the photos I import dated and numbered in the same sequence the camera took them is a whole lot more useful than what was there originally.
I also built an Automator workflow that will ask me what name I want to give all the photos imported in a batch. If I use that one I could tell the Finder to give all the photos I took at Don's birthday party something like "Birthday Don 03.JPG" Now when I look at that photo in a year or two it has a meaningful file name.
That's just scratching the surface of what Automator can do. Since you can save a workflow it's relatively easy to take the time to set up Automator once to perform that action. Then when you need to do it again. Just double click the little Automator program you made and you can walk away and let your Mac do its thing while you get on with your life.
If you want to learn Automator for Leopard, we have a copy in the PT SLUG Library. Give it a shot. If you decide you benefit, buy yourself a copy. All SLUG members get a 30% discount on Peachpit books through Peachpit's user group program. Call Bob Snow for your discount code.
Last changed: Mar 04 2008 at 9:49 PM
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