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Can someone explain to me what Automator does and whats a workflow?
- Thread starter ki2594
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It will take care of common repetitive tasks for you, like resizing a batch of photos, or converting a batch of photos to jpeg, as a basic example. Another example, it will check a photo website every day (say NASA's photo of the day), download the photo and import it into iPhoto for you. I haven't found much use for it, but I'm sure folks out there use it for many things.
Apple's Automator 101
Apple's Automator 101
Go to http://www.automator.us/leopard/index.html and look at the videos and tutorials.. there is tons of info at this website. It was created by Automator programmers. So it's like a semi official website for Automator.
I created an Automator action to sync the contents of my USB thumb drive with my machine. I keep a folder on my machine called "THUMB backup". So if I loose my thumb drive or it gets damaged, I'll always know exactly what was on it when it last left my machine. I saved an Automator workflow as an application. So when I am about to eject my thumb drive, I double click the icon and the contents of the drive are synced with my backup folder automatically.
Also, from time to time my parents want pictures of my kids. Since my 6.1MP images are rather larger, it's impossible to email Mom and Dad 150 Megs of stuff at a clip. So I have another action that, once all my pictures are dropped on the Automater icon, it resizes all the pictures to 1024x768, zips them up, attaches it to an email and BOOM! I'm done. Imagine having to do that by hand! It would take all day. Automator does it in a minute or two.
You can do anything with Automator.
Also, from time to time my parents want pictures of my kids. Since my 6.1MP images are rather larger, it's impossible to email Mom and Dad 150 Megs of stuff at a clip. So I have another action that, once all my pictures are dropped on the Automater icon, it resizes all the pictures to 1024x768, zips them up, attaches it to an email and BOOM! I'm done. Imagine having to do that by hand! It would take all day. Automator does it in a minute or two.
You can do anything with Automator.
Cure Cancer?
Seriously though, I too have been wondering how to do this type of stuff but have never felt it necessary to research it. Thank you all for just making my life easier.