Adobe Illustrator Automator Action

August 11, 2005 by Ben Long
Filed under: Automator Actions 

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.


If you’re not already familiar with Automator, then take a look at this story to learn more about what Automator is for, and how it works. If you are already comfortable with Automator, but haven’t yet used it with Photoshop, then be sure to have a look at this.

Automator does not include any actions for driving Illustrator, so I quickly whipped up a Save as JPEG action. Simply install this as you would any other Automator Action (sticking it in Home > Library > Automator is the easiest way) and it should appear in your Automator Actions list.

Using the action is very straightforward. Enter a new name for the resulting JPEG, or leave the name field blank to use the Illustrator document’s name. Pick a destination, and then configure your options.

Click to download Save as JPEG for Adobe Illustrator CS2
Click to download Save as JPEG for Adobe Illustrator CS

Buy a copy of Photoshop CS 2 for the Mac at Amazon.com.
Buy a copy of Photoshop CS 2 for Windows at Amazon.com.

Need to upgrade to Tiger? Order it now from Amazon.com.

include(‘./adInsert.html’);

Stuffit Automator Action
I’ve also been finding that stuffing files is often a regular part of my photography and web development workflow. I frequently need to stuff files before FTPing them to a server. If I’m batch processing images using Automator, it’s silly to stuff them by hand, so I threw together this extremely quick-and-dirty Stuffing action.

Need a copy of Stuffit? Order it now from Amazon.com.

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Comments

14 Comments on Adobe Illustrator Automator Action

  1. Brad Lane on Wed, 16th Nov 2005 12:36 am

    2. does stuffing photos and other things to FTP allow them to still be used by the server for the site? Thanks

  2. Andy on Wed, 16th Nov 2005 5:15 pm

    3. I’ve got the excact same problem . I am currently facing manually converting 40 eps into jpegs. I’d really like to use your action… unfortunately am still on Adobe Illustrator CS (not CS2).
    A CS version of this little helper would be greatly appreciated.
    many thanks in advanced,
    Andy

  3. Brad on Thu, 17th Nov 2005 2:08 pm

    4. Very cool and easy to create stuff! Thank you so much. My life may just involve regular activities other than photoretouching and manipulations!!!!!

    I was wondering, what the problem might be when i tried to run a workflow using the unfilter action, it gives me a ‘cannot find (some wierd named file)’ i was doing this for CS not CS2. It worked the first three times and then dumped on me….

    Thanks again!

  4. Guy Williams on Wed, 11th Jan 2006 4:52 pm

    5. Adobe Illustrator Automator Action

    This looks great. Exactly what we’re looking for. Unfortunatelly at the moment we onlly have Illustrator 10 (OS X.4). Is there a workaround are are we forced to upgrade to Illustrator CS 2?

    Any suggestions gratefully received.

  5. Ben Long on Tue, 17th Jan 2006 7:09 pm

    6. Guy – Unfortunately, Illustrator X just doesn’t provide the AppleScript support to work with Automator, so I’m afraid you’re stuck upgrading. I could probably make this action work with regular CS, if you have a copy of that.

  6. Complete Digital Photography » Photoshop Elements Action Pack v1.0 on Tue, 12th Sep 2006 1:03 am

    7. [...] Buy a copy of Photoshop Elements for the Mac at Amazon.com. Need to upgrade to Tiger? Order it now from Amazon.com. Related Links: Other photo-related Automator Actions AppleScript for Digital Photographers Taking Action with Photoshop Actions Adobe Illustrator Automator Action For more on Automator, check out: Automator.US automatorworld.com [...]

  7. Phil Oye on Sun, 24th Sep 2006 11:20 pm

    8. I’m having trouble making this work, specifically around file names.

    The action works great if I want to specify a new name using the “New Name” field. However, if I leave the default “[original]“, the script aborts with the AppleScript error: “Finder got an error: Can’t make some data into the expected type. (-1700)”.

    Any ideas how I can make it keep the original file name?

    Thanks in advance,
    Phi

  8. Phil Oye on Sun, 24th Sep 2006 11:23 pm

    9. Er… I mistyped my own name.

    Phil

  9. Complete Digital Photography » Separate JPEGs Automator Action on Tue, 7th Nov 2006 1:42 pm

    10. [...] If you’d like to know more about Automator, check out Apple’s Automator pages. For more information on using Automator with the Photoshop Action Pack, have a look at this article at CreativePro.com, and this Macworld Magazine feature. Related Links: Photoshop Automator Actions Other photo-related Automator Actions Taking Action with Photoshop Actions Adobe Illustrator Automator Action [...]

  10. Complete Digital Photography » Photo Renaming Automator Actions v2 on Wed, 22nd Nov 2006 1:55 pm

    11. [...] If you’d like to know more about Automator, check out Apple’s Automator pages. Buy a copy of Photoshop CS 2 for the Mac at Amazon.com. Need to upgrade to Tiger? Order it now from Amazon.com. Related Links: Other photo-related Automator Actions AppleScript for Digital Photographers Taking Action with Photoshop Actions Adobe Illustrator Automator Action For more on Automator, check out: Automator.US automatorworld.com [...]

  11. Michelle on Wed, 16th May 2007 6:13 pm

    12. I need an AI to EPS convertor! I’m converting hundreds of logos to EPS so that everyone on earth can use them.

  12. syed on Sat, 15th Nov 2008 10:27 am

    13. i want to save ai file to 4 pdfs and 1 eps
    1st pdf is two layer off and other three on
    2nd pdf is one layer off and others on
    3rd
    4th
    i eps is convert all texs to outlines and save automatically collect the file path
    pls give answers for me

  13. geoff on Mon, 26th Jul 2010 9:29 am

    14. Hi, I’m trying to find a way to have automator run a illustrator action. I’m just trying to have it select all text and create to outline. But I would rather have this run in automator then have to batch output in illustrator. any tips?

  14. Peter Breis on Mon, 16th Aug 2010 2:44 am

    15. For all of you looking to convert between formats see:

    http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/automator/illustratorautomatoractionpackforleopard.html

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