I was hoping to get a release of the Photoshop CS4 Automator Action Pack posted today, but for now, this beta will have to do. As near as I can tell, it’s completely usable and should work just fine, but I haven’t had a chance to test it very thoroughly, so I’d appreciate any bug reports. This 4.0 collection currently only supports CS4 and has a number of bug fixes, and 6 new actions.

Mac OS X 10.4 ships with Automator, a powerful workflow automation tool that lets you easily automate the operation of any AppleScriptable application. While Automator can control many applications right out of the box, it lacks the ability to automate Photoshop. For Photoshop control, you need The Photoshop Action Pack, which provides everything necessary to drive Photoshop CS, CS2 and CS3 using Automator. This update, for Photoshop CS3 only, provides a couple of important bug fixes as well as 2 new actions.

Adobe’s Digital Negative Specification, or DNG format, provides an open standard for the storage of raw camera data. However, since few cameras can store directly into Digital Negative format, if you want to take advantage of DNG, you first need to convert your existing raw files to DNG format using the Adobe DNG Converter. Mac users running OS X 10.4 ("Tiger") or later can ease their conversion tasks using this Automator action, which lets you batch process your DNG conversions, as well as include DNG conversion in a more complex image processing pipeline. This updated version adds Leopard support as well as the ability to convert Sony SR2 files.

If you’re a Mac user who uses Adobe Lightroom, or Apple Aperture and Photoshop, then you might find my Photoshop Action Pack to be a great add-on, as it allows you to add some automated Photoshop functionality to your Lightroom or Aperture workflow. In addition to facilitating more complex post-production workflows, the Action Pack allows you to create a simple procedure that allows you to easily access Photoshop functionality that is not provided in either of those other two programs. From Photoshop filters, to HDR merges, this technique makes it easy to effectively add Photoshop features to either Lightroom or Aperture.

If you’ve been having trouble getting the Photoshop Action Pack to install, it’s possible that your copy of Photoshop is not properly registered with the OS routines that help Automator find the actions that are associated with each application. This simple script will force Photoshop to re-register itself with the appropriate OS routines. If you’re having trouble getting the Photoshop Action Pack to appear in Automator, quit Automator, then drag your copy of Photoshop onto the Application Updater script. When it’s done processing, re-launch Automator and you should see the Action Pack actions.

As all Photoshop Elements users know, the Actions Palette is one of the things that separates Elements from Photoshop CS2. Or rather, the lack of an Actions palette is what separates Elements from CS2. Photoshop Elements has no scripting facilities of any kind – no Actions palette within the program, and no scripting support for AppleScript or JavaScript. However, now with Automator and the Photoshop Elements Action Pack, you can finally automate Elements, to batch process your images.

If you want to import raw files into Aperture that you’ve already edited with Photoshop Camera Raw, (or perform some other action on those files using Automator – such as zipping or uploading) then this Automator Action might ease your migration. If you’ve got a lot of raw files, it can be time consuming to sort through which ones you have already selected and deemed worthy of further editing. But, if you’ve already sorted through those files and processed them in Photoshop Camera raw, and if you’ve got your Camera Raw preferences set to create sidecar XMP files, then this action will greatly speed your importing.

While Aperture’s toolset provides most of the editing features you’ll need for most of your digital imaging post-production, there are still many occasions for which you’ll need to do additional processing in Photoshop. Whether it’s for simple CMYK conversion, to apply a Photoshop plug-in, or for more complex operations that aren’t possible in Aperture, you might regularly find yourself integrating Photoshop into your Aperture workflow. If you find yourself doing this a lot, then you’ll want to consider automating the process. When powered by Automator, these two applications provide enough automation capabilities for you to easily create complex automated production pipelines.

Aperture’s Open in External Editor command provides a simple, effective way for you to easily take images from Photoshop to Aperture and back again. To provide some additional Aperture automation possibilities, I’m offering this Start Photoshop Roundtrip action which lets you add Aperture’s Open in External Editor command to your Automator workflows.

If you regularly shoot in Raw + JPEG, and you use Apple’s Automator, then you might have already discovered that when importing raw and JPEG files that have the same name, Aperture ignores the JPEG files. This Automator Action provides a simple, speedy workaround to this problem.

For Mac-based digital photographers, Apple’s Automator (which is built-in to OS X 10.4 "Tiger") provides an exceptional workflow tool that allows you to automate every part of your workflow, from basic edits to file management. While Automator’s uses for programs like Photoshop are obvious, there are a number of other photography workflow problems that can be solved with Automator.

This isn’t necessarily a digital photography-related story, but it might help you with some of your digital photography workflow problems. In preparing figures for my forthcoming book The Elements of Raw, I found myself needing to convert about 100 Adobe Illustrator EPS files into JPEGs to ease the transmission of images to the tech editor. I decided to turn to Apple’s Automator to ease my conversions.