Hello Guys!
I did get "Folder Actions" to work in Automator like @petester requested and provided the file.
Yes thanks I know this. The first round showed nothing happening at all - zilch thats why I started over from scratch... and the next attempt it worked no problem.
Quite the mystery as to why it didn’t do it the first time around. Anyhow, thanks for looking into this. I’m going to use your file.
So here is a screen capture for reference…
“Trial Target 1” folder is where I drag the images which are then copied to “Trial Target 2”.
In this process the long axis of the copied image files is resized to “100 pixels”.
I think I have an idea why the erratic results - at least in my experiments.
Any movement of the target folders creates a failure - which is obvious on one level - but what is not expected is if You have moved the target folders temporarily into another folder for whatever reason and then back to their original location (as spec’d in Automator) before You run the script - Automator will fail. There is no recovery even going back in Automator and reaffirming the folder locations does not work. You have to start over… completely. What a fragile situation.
However - until @petester wrote about his “Folder Action” issue I has never used “Folder Actions” I have always used Automator scripts as a “Service”.
So Pete I created the series of actions (“Copy Finder Items” & “Scale”) as a Service and it works solidly.
Note there are two copy actions (Please see Fig. 1):
• First to “untitled folder” which would be the location for the unmodified originals.
• Second to “untitled folder 2” which is where the scaled down images will be stored.
Fig.1 - Automator Script as “Service” example setup
The steps to run the “Service” script (“CopyAndScale”) are slightly different…
Done.
Please also note the “SetSpotLightComments” service. You can use this action to add keywords, copyright info, etc. to your files. These words are placed in a file’s comment section and are searchable by Spotlight. You could run it separately (as in Fig. 2) or add it as part of another action. Check it out in the Automator menu.
Fig.2 - Select the desired files. Next select the “Context Menu” to select the Service.
My suggestion to the two apps is not related to the image workflow particularly and is addressing something that came up.
It is funny though as the more I think back, SIPS was one of the main things I wanted to do a similar task with of pumping out small thumbnails of images when they entered particular folders.
That task and a couple of others is what turned me to first lingon which was free back then and then later Hazel. Because even back then the apple folder action could not be relied on.
Ive used sips a lot in the past and still do every now and then. Heck I still have some of it running in code I wrote many many years ago.
SIPS is a good suggestion of use. Thank you.
I just don’t see the point in coding it in automator for this particular task since there is a gui that can do the exact same thing. (Probably uses sips under the hood)
And you know me love to code stuff… 