jeffeh Posted December 16, 2005 Share Posted December 16, 2005 So the only thing that I use automator is to automatically transfer my .avi,.mpg,.mov downloads into a particular folder every night @ 2 and also to copy them to an external hard drive across my network on my windows pc. Works great for that but havn't been able to come up with much else to use it for. Post your favorite or most common workflows here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wickedkitten Veteran Posted December 16, 2005 Veteran Share Posted December 16, 2005 http://www.automatorworld.com/archives/convert-text/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Novaoblivion Posted December 17, 2005 Share Posted December 17, 2005 I have one I use to make a new mail message and attach the selected files to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elliott Posted December 17, 2005 Share Posted December 17, 2005 I have one I use to make a new mail message and attach the selected files to it. This is just a question, but why not just drag those files onto the Mail icon in your dock? Mail automatically makes a new message with those files attached when you do so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Novaoblivion Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 Because I am a Mac noob and didnt know you could do that :p thanks for the tip! :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John S. Veteran Posted December 18, 2005 Veteran Share Posted December 18, 2005 http://www.automatorworld.com/archives/convert-text/ Thanks for the link, scripting is something I haven't played with yet. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elliott Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 Because I am a Mac noob and didnt know you could do that :p thanks for the tip! :) :laugh: Haha. Just a little Mac tip of the day. Try dragging and dropping a bit. Common sense things (like most drag and drop) usually yield awesome results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freakz Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 wow this should be a great little thread... hope to get some cool workflows.. i have one that scales my photos to 800x600 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FOOOD Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 Here are some of mine: Renaming files & folders for windows I converted a load of mac icons to windows icons & png files with pixadex. But when sending the files & folders to my pc i kept getting error messages saying windows can't read the following characters in the file names (or something like that) OS X uses some characters in file/folder names that windows doesn't like (e.g. |, /, " & ?). So i created a workflow that looks for these characters in files & folder names on the desktop & renames them removing those characters. I ran the workflow & can now send all the files my pc :) Tidy the desktop I always accumulate loads of files on my desktop. I have a folder on my hard drive called temp stuff, & every now when it's getting too messy I then dump all the files into this folder to sort out later. So I created a workflow that will find all the image files on the desktop & move them to a folder called Images in the temp stuff folder. It also finds all the documents on the desktop & moves them to a folder called Documents in the temp stuff folder. Next it looks for all the video files on the desktop & moves them to a folder called Videos in the temp stuff folder. So now it will clear up my desktop & organize them into different folders as well :) I think i'll add to it so that it tidies up dmg, sit files etc. along with sound/music files :yes: PNG to JPG converter I take quite a few screen grabs/desktop screenshots but prefer to use them in jpg format rather than png format. So I made a simple workflow to find png files on the desktop & convert them to jpg files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tariq Posted December 19, 2005 Share Posted December 19, 2005 similar to yours jeffeh, i use a workflow to backup and archive (zip) all the important folders on my mac and send it to an external drive located on the network. works great, and i haven't been able to find a good alternative that meets my needs (i've tried at least 6+ backup programs) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
couture Posted December 19, 2005 Share Posted December 19, 2005 I still haven't gotten the hang of automator :( I feel slow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadrack Posted December 19, 2005 Share Posted December 19, 2005 not enough applications offer support for Automator yet. I'm going to stick with Applescript for the time being. Does Adobe CS2 support automator? My CS1 doesn't :(. That is what I think would be most useful to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fukachu Posted December 19, 2005 Share Posted December 19, 2005 i also feel like an idiot.. i have never used automator since getting tiger, infact i haven't even opened it. but the desktop file organising sounds great FOOOD and im definitely going to hit automator tonight! thanks for the motivation guys.. hopefully this little baby will really organise some folders for me and much more. please keep the workflows comming or atleast what you use it for so i can get more ideas! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the evn show Posted December 20, 2005 Share Posted December 20, 2005 I've got a fairly simple one that takes the currenctly selected file, FTPs it to a temporary directory and then displays the URI to the file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FOOOD Posted December 20, 2005 Share Posted December 20, 2005 I've got a fairly simple one that takes the currenctly selected file, FTPs it to a temporary directory and then displays the URI to the file. That sounds like a good one :yes: I'm having a go at the same/similar. I got Automator to ask for items & then upload them to a specific locaction with Transmit. But how would I get it to display the URL of the file? :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fusion Posted December 20, 2005 Share Posted December 20, 2005 PNG to JPG converter I take quite a few screen grabs/desktop screenshots but prefer to use them in jpg format rather than png format. So I made a simple workflow to find png files on the desktop & convert them to jpg files. Why not just make it so your screenshots get taken in jpg instead of png? Terminal: defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg You'll need to log out / log in for the change to take. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FOOOD Posted December 20, 2005 Share Posted December 20, 2005 Thanks, I saw that the other day. But sometimes (not always) I want to keep them in PNG format :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tariq Posted December 20, 2005 Share Posted December 20, 2005 That sounds like a good one :yes: I'm having a go at the same/similar. I got Automator to ask for items & then upload them to a specific locaction with Transmit. But how would I get it to display the URL of the file? :) I'd like to know how you displayed the URL too. My workflow currently goes... 1 Get Selected Finder Items 2 Upload Files I saved it as a Finder Plug-in so I can just right-click a selection of files and select Automator > Send to FTP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the evn show Posted December 21, 2005 Share Posted December 21, 2005 That sounds like a good one :yes: I'm having a go at the same/similar. I got Automator to ask for items & then upload them to a specific locaction with Transmit. But how would I get it to display the URL of the file? :) Mine is actually just a front end to an applescript (which is itself a front end to the curl command line utility) that I wrote a while ago. After curl has uploaded the files I just display an input box with the default answer set to the URI. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corona Posted December 21, 2005 Share Posted December 21, 2005 god i love osx :wub: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FOOOD Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 Using a simple new one: I often copy folders from one mac to another & it fubars the folders views. I've tried setting the same folder view globally but for some reason it won't apply to the folders & subfolders copied from the other mac :rolleyes: So I've made an action that will set the folders views for your chosen folder (& subfolders). (The messed up views were really annoying me for ages) Mine is actually just a front end to an applescript (which is itself a front end to the curl command line utility) that I wrote a while ago. After curl has uploaded the files I just display an input box with the default answer set to the URI. Ah... I think that's a bit beyond me :blush: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NinjaMonkey82 Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 I use a simple one for helping me with scanning. My scanner software only scans in to .tif so I have an Automator workflow that copy's the tif to a new folder, converts it to .jpg then imports the images to iPhoto. This saves me a lot of time and hard drive space. Later I take the original folder with the .tif files, compress them and transfer them to a Firewire drive so I have a backup. So far thats the only use I have found for Automator. I hope it sees a nice update in 10.5. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xxxxxx.xxxxxx Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 I only use Automator for 1 workflow. My workflow will take a screenshot and then upload it to my website via Transmit. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadrack Posted December 23, 2005 Share Posted December 23, 2005 I'm trying to setup an Automator plugin for Finder that converts selected images to a particular size. I see that "Preview" has such an option. I would also like it to copy the original into a backup folder that I will embed in the workflow. I can't seem to get it right, however. If I do the Copy with finder into the backup folder first and then do the resize, the one in the backup folder is resized but the one I selected is still the original size. Vise-versa: then they are both resized. How can I branch events so that the original is copied to the backup folder and resized? I would just do this in Applescript, but for some reason "Preview" doesn't have a dictionary. The only thing I can think of that has a dictionary and can resize images is Photoshop, and that seems overkill for what I am needing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iBrat Posted December 30, 2005 Share Posted December 30, 2005 I must say I haven't used workflow yet. I saw it today and I thought "hmm, I wonder what that does". Then I remembered my friend bragging about it and how great it is. I don't really use the computer that much and I am about a month new to Macs, maybe I'll get around to messing with it eventually :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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