Mac Automation: holiday photos

Okay, try this one.... I want to use Automator to email a few people in my address book. I want to email them on certain holidays w/ a picture. Is dat possible?

Thanks for these tutorials! As a new Mac user, I find them very interesting.

"It is serious limitation to iphoto that this can't be done without individually renaming each file."


Photos menus - Batch Change. Done.


Like many others I just don't 'get' the usefulness of automating what iPhoto already does. BEFORE I want to go emailing photos I want to check them over, RENAME them, and then send them.

My frustration with and misunderstanding(?) of Automator continues.

I think the initial commenters missed the educational approach of Cory's essay. Like "Hello World", the point of a tutorial example is not to be directly useful, but to illustrate a process by building it from familiar elements. However, Cory could have selected a task to automate, that is not already easily handled. He could have also eliminated the bewilderment by prefacing the essay with: "iPhoto already does this, but here's how it could be done with Automator." Keep in mind, this blog is about learning Automator, not optimizing iPhoto.
Here's a suggestion for a future column: a task that is potentially useful, not already possible and non-trivial. I've been around Macs for years and have no clue how to do this with Folder Actions or Automator.

Let's automate a folder, call it SendThis to have the following behavior: when a PDF file is placed in the folder, the automation script attaches that file to an email sent to a fixed list of recipients defined when the automation is set up. The Automation will only email the new entry, not any files already in the folder. Each incoming file name will be unique and not known to the Automation. Alternate method: It is acceptable to allow the automation to automatically copy the file to a folder called SendThisArchive as part of the automation so that the SendThis folder does not retain files.

Teach a man to fish...I "wrote" an automator app that dies what I wanted with the exception of the actual import into itunes. For some reason I get an error when I try and automate this even though I can do it in iphoto by just selecting import photos and pointing to the folder where the new files are located. Anyway, works well enough for a first attempt and I don't actually use iphoto all that much to organize pictures. Thanks for the inspiration.

Is this possible?

Use Automator to make an iSight camera function as a security webcam. When is senses motion it snaps and saves to a folder, and emails out the pic.

Or....

Use Automater to a make an iSight camera function as a simple webcam. Taking 1 picture every five minutes. Then pipe the pictures to iMovie to make a movie out of all the snaps.

What would be useful is an automator program that will override the settings of iphoto and automatically change the file name of the photos to include the date they were taken and a sequential number. It is serious limitation to iphoto that this can't be done without individually renaming each file.

I got a digital picture frame, and I have all my photos from the last 3 years on my external hard drive. I would like to shrink them down in size (and resolution) so that I can fit more on a 2 gb SD card so that I can have all my pictures on the card.

my question is how to get automator scripts working with aperture in leopard. I know other people have had problems with this but I have yet to find a solution. Whenever I add an aperture action I get the following error:

*** -[NSNull length]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0xa03c0020

I don't see the sense in setting up an automator thing to do this stuff, when a properly setup iphoto will do all of this virtually automatically by itself. For instance, to do this. all I would do is hook up my digital camera, turn it on, which makes iphoto start up the automatic downloading, so all I have to do is decide whether to import all or some, and then whether to delete the imports from the camera. Once they're imported, they're automatically in a new event, which is easy enough to name, which is virtually the same thing as an album, but easier. Then it's just a matter of selecting which photos to email, and clicking through a few options in the share menu, then in he email program adding the addresses you want. The overall thing takes fewer mouse clicks to do than if you set up an automator action to do it.