I recently discussed and gave an introduction to Automator a built-in workflow utility on Mac OSX. In this post I will demonstrate the steps I use to resize any number of images using Automator and Photoshop CS2, I will provide appropriate links to download the packages needed as well as provide my workflow as a download so that you can modify it to fit your own needs.

What you will need for this workflow:

• Basic understanding of Automator (found in my Introductory article)
• Photoshop Automator Actions v3.0 (found here) - my current install is v2.2 so if you have that you are fine - install this after download
• Photoshop CS or CS2
• photos or other graphics you’d like to resize
• some spare time

The Photoshop Automator Actions come wtih a large number of actions for use with Photoshop and Automator. A handy instruction document is also provided which will explain each action in further detail as well as the options that they provide.

To begin we first need to set the Color Settings in Photoshop so that the Automator doesn’t stop mid-process. This is a stumbling block I initially hit as I generally have Photoshop prompt me to convert each file I open to the working color space if it currently is not in that working space. Every time I ran the workflow I would have to accept the change to the working color space which made the automation process seem redundant considering I had to sit at my computer and select OK every time a picture was opened up. To remedy this make sure the check box for Ask When Opening under Profile Mismatches is unchecked when you want to run the workflow (I have provided a screenshot of my Color Settings below).

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Mac OSX comes with a very useful utility by the name of Automator. With this utility you are able to create workflows which will ease the process of repetitive tasks. The default Automator setup comes complete with the ability to create workflows for the majority of built-in applications and utilities of OSX.

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