Part of my job is to organize our digital photo library. I have to take all of our in-house photography and art sent to us by manufacturers and set it to 300 DPI, give it a CMYK profile, convert it to EPS and save it under the product number. This needs to be done on anywhere from 10 to 200 new images for every production, for 5 separate publications. It would take a really really long time and be really really boring if I had to do all of that by hand for every file. Fortunately, I don’t. “Well why the hell not?” Because I’m cool and use automation.

Automation is the process of getting your computer to perform multiple repetitive tasks with minimal input. Many software packages have built-in options for creating and running automation, such as Actions in Adobe software (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) and AppleScript in the Mac OS, or standalone programs such as Macro Express.

The Actions tab in Photoshop

As an example, let’s look at the automated process I use for the above mentioned tasks. I have an action set up in Photoshop to open a file, convert it to “U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2″ color profile, set the DPI to 300 without resampling, and finally save the file as an EPS in a different folder than the original. Then, there’s an additional process I can perform in Photoshop called a Batch, which allows me to perform my action on all images within a folder, instead of having to run that action on each file individually. I select the source folder as well as a destination folder and Photoshop runs the action on all valid image files. We use separate dump and processed folders for images to help prevent accidental deletion of processed images or using an unprocessed image in a layout (it’s a real pain-in-the ass when you’re preping PDFs for the printer and a page won’t generate a PDF because it has an RGB image). Finally, there’s an additional layer of automation that is done via AppleScript. I have a script set up that will run the batch process in photoshop on each image dump folder and then delete the contents of the dump folders after processing. I only have to run this script once at the end of the day; it takes maybe 30 seconds of my time instead of all upwards of half a day.

A Fractal from
Fractal-Recursions.com

As you can see, there are varying levels of complexity that can be achieved via automation, and it’s not just limited to administrative tasks like image resizing or file naming. Various creative processes can also be automated; though I’ve only included the previous link as an example of what is possible. Use it as a springboard for new ideas, since throwing on a downloaded action and is just as bad as slapping on a few filters; it’s amateurish and you’re not really bettering your skills by trying to shortcut the creative process. An excellent example of art that can come from automation is a fractal; infinitely complex patterns that emerge from repetition of a simple ruleset.

The biggest benefit to automation is the time you’ll save by not having to slog through all those mind-numbing menial tasks. Nearly anything can be automated if you take the time to learn how. Help docs or Google are good starting points for learning, as well as downloading and tinkering with other people’s actions/scripts/etc. Here are some tutorials to get started with Photoshop:

Basic Actions
Advanced Actions
Batch Processing