Monat: Mai 2006

Automator

For my OnTour weblog I wanted to publish a few photos. Therefore I had to pick a few Photos from my Library (iPhoto) and resize a copy of each of them to publish it later.
On my Windows Box I would have used Irfan View’s Batch Rename Tool.
But on my Mac things are a bit different and as I finally recognised much easier and very intuitive.

automator.jpg

I did the following:
I openend the Automator (which I never used before) and combined the Actions “Ask for Photos” + “Scale Images”. Then Automator asked me if I want to scale the original files or a copy. I choosed “a copy”, and automatically I got the additional action “Copy Finder Items”. Then I tweaked at the size and the location properties of the actions.

automatorscreen.jpg

Finally I hit the Play button, and everything worked as I expected. Honestly, first I didn’t expect that this workflow would work right, but it did.

I think almost every user is able to make such a workflow. It’s really easy and extremely powerful.

Every time I recognise such a very good and easy Mac feature I wonder why the “Windows world” is often such complicated and awkward when things and tasks can be so easy.

Every software developer should keep in mind that software should make things easier. If you have no idea what easiness is, buy a Mac!

Here is a description of the Automator