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Basically speaking, Automator is a front-end for AppleScript that does pretty much what you said it does 🙂
 
so, like, is there a way to input a list of files (stored in a text file and return delimited) and have automator do a mass-conversion?
 
what type of conversion? i have a workflow set so that anything in folder x is converted to iPod format and moved to folder Y
 
Try this...

-Get specified finder items (and make it point to a smart folder matching your image criteria)
-Change type of images (converts format)
 
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