Automator workflow of the month: Quick media manipulation
Much as we depend on text, a lot of us deal with images, audio files, and movies as part of our workaday world. And it’s not unusual that when working with such files you need to perform a minor tweak—rotate a picture, convert a music track to something that better harmonizes with iTunes and your iPod, or trim a movie that won’t fit through an email gateway. All these tasks are possible, but it’s a bother to launch an application, import the media, and do the deed for such seemingly minor tweaks. Thanks to Automator, you needn’t. All this and more can be performed in the Finder. Let’s see how.
Rapidly rotate an image
In the Windows OS, you can right-click on an image and choose a Rotate command. The Mac OS lacks such a feature, but you can produce something darned close with Automator.
Launch Automator (in your /Applications folder) and in the template chooser that appears choose Service. Click Choose. In the resulting workflow window, configure the pop-up menus at the top of the window to read Service receives no input in any application.
Select the Files & Folders library and drag the Get Selected Finder Items and Copy Finder Items actions into the workflow area (in that order). Now select the Photos library and add the Rotate Images action to the workflow. Create a new folder on the desktop and call it Rotated Images. Drag that folder to the Copy Finder Items pop-up menu. In the Rotate Images action, choose the kind of rotation you want the workflow to perform—left, right, or 180 degrees. Save the workflow (File > Save) and give it an intuitive name such as Rotate.
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