{"id":1253,"date":"2012-07-04T12:30:31","date_gmt":"2012-07-04T19:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/?p=1253"},"modified":"2012-07-04T12:34:21","modified_gmt":"2012-07-04T19:34:21","slug":"use-automator-to-combine-your-research-photos-into-one-pdf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/use-automator-to-combine-your-research-photos-into-one-pdf\/","title":{"rendered":"Use Automator to combine your research photos into one PDF"},"content":{"rendered":"

By request, these are updated instructions for using your Mac to combine your research photos into a PDF. For more on digital research workflows, see here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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If you have a Mac, you own a robot! It’s called Automator and it lives in your Applications folder. It does pretty much what the name implies: It bundles little actions and makes them easy to repeat and perform on a lot of files. Here, I’ll show you how to use Automator to combine a bunch of research photos into one PDF.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Open Automator<\/h3>\n
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It lives in your Applications<\/strong> folder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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From the pop-up menu, select Workflow<\/h3>\n
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Choosing Workflow <\/strong>means that in order to run your series of actions, you’ll open up Automator first. (It’s kind of fun to experiment with Application<\/strong>, too! That means that to your series of actions becomes a standalone application. To run it, you double-click on your icon or drag some files onto it. But for now, let’s keep it simple and stick with Workflow<\/strong>.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Let’s investigate!<\/h3>\n
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The Automator interface is actually pretty simple. The far left pane (1<\/strong>) contains categories of actions you might want to run. The second pane (2<\/strong>) contains the actions themselves: things like “Add Songs to Playlist” and “Combine Excel Files.” You can assemble actions into sequences by dragging them from pane 2<\/strong> into pane 3<\/strong>, in the order you want to run them. So, really, not too complicated!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Assemble your actions (1)<\/h3>\n
\"media_1341428465682.png\"<\/div>\n
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First, you need a way to feed Automator the files you want it to alter. Under the Files and Folders<\/strong> category in pane 1<\/strong>, find the Ask for Finder Items<\/strong> action in pane 2<\/strong> and drag it into pane 3<\/strong>. This means that the first thing that Automator will do is ask you which files you want it to modify. Because you’ll be modifying multiple files, check the Allow Multiple Selction<\/strong> box.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Assemble your actions (2)<\/h3>\n
\"media_1341428784833.png\"<\/div>\n
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Happily, the latest version of Automator comes with an action that does exactly what we want! Under the PDFs<\/strong> category in pane 1<\/strong>, you’ll find an action called New PDF from Images<\/strong>. Select it and drag it into pane 3<\/strong>. In the Output File Name<\/strong> box, call it something that makes sense to you. You can even tell Automator where to save your new PDF, if you want.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Run your workflow<\/h3>\n
\"media_1341428886621.png\"<\/div>\n
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Click on the Run<\/strong> button, which you’ll find in the top right-hand corner of your Automator window. Automator will ask you to select the photos you want to modify (hold down Command-A<\/strong> to select all the photos in a folder) and then it’ll run your actions!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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You’ve got one big PDF!<\/h3>\n
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Unless you specified a different place to save it, your big PDF should be waiting for you on your desktop, simple as that. Cool, huh?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Save your workflow<\/h3>\n
\"media_1341429306838.png\"<\/div>\n
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Since you’ll probably want to do this again, select File<\/strong>, then Save<\/strong>, so you can perform these actions again later. You can save it as a Workflow,<\/strong> or, if you don’t want to have to open up Automator every time you perform your action, you can save it as an Application.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Play with some options<\/h3>\n
\"media_1341429541378.png\"<\/div>\n
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Automator does a lot of cool stuff, and it’s fun to just play around with it. For example, you can make your PDF easier to find with Spotlight by using the Set PDF Metadata <\/strong>action (in the PDFs<\/strong> category). Give it a shot! You won’t break anything.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By request, these are updated instructions for using your Mac to combine your research photos into a PDF. For more on digital research workflows, see here, here, and here. If you have a Mac, you own a robot! It’s called Automator and it lives in your Applications folder. It does pretty much what the name […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-technology","category-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1255,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253\/revisions\/1255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}