Author Topic: PM + Automator?  (Read 6237 times)

Offline OldandGrim

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PM + Automator?
« on: January 13, 2009, 04:31:51 PM »
Hi I have reached a point using PM where I have collected all the negatives together onto one contact sheet, these files are collected from 50 different folders created over three months and filtered down to a selection of 100 photos. Has anyone found a way of using Automator or apple scripts to then take the selection and move then to a single folder where they can be processed by a editor (Nx2) and then moved back to there original filed positions ?

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: PM + Automator?
« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2009, 04:50:22 PM »
Hi I have reached a point using PM where I have collected all the negatives together onto one contact sheet, these files are collected from 50 different folders created over three months and filtered down to a selection of 100 photos. Has anyone found a way of using Automator or apple scripts to then take the selection and move then to a single folder where they can be processed by a editor (Nx2) and then moved back to there original filed positions ?

Photo Mechanic is not scriptable via AppleScript or Automator.

Why do you need to move files around in order to edit them?

-Kirk

Offline OldandGrim

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Re: PM + Automator?
« Reply #2 on: January 13, 2009, 05:10:22 PM »
I want to run a Batch Process from Nx2 which looks for a single folder and then applies a saved set of edit steps to the 100 images in the background.

At this point I have a selection of 100 images using PM which come from a number of folders. The only way I can see to achieve this at the moment is

1 copy all the files to a single folder preform all my editing on the copied images or

2 Find a way of transporting the selection to a single folder allowing the batch process to take   place and then move all the files back to there original places

The Batch Process reads only single folders and not individual files I can achieve this by going to each folder from Nx2 selecting each file and applying the settings.

I was just hoping that by using the power of PM to filter and select all my images for this months project from across my collection I would be able to apply some standard edits on mass. Before individually editing each image.

I do not really want to create duplicates and do not really want to move the files from there original position.

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: PM + Automator?
« Reply #3 on: January 13, 2009, 05:16:44 PM »
I want to run a Batch Process from Nx2 which looks for a single folder and then applies a saved set of edit steps to the 100 images in the background.

At this point I have a selection of 100 images using PM which come from a number of folders. The only way I can see to achieve this at the moment is

1 copy all the files to a single folder preform all my editing on the copied images or

2 Find a way of transporting the selection to a single folder allowing the batch process to take   place and then move all the files back to there original places

The Batch Process reads only single folders and not individual files I can achieve this by going to each folder from Nx2 selecting each file and applying the settings.

I was just hoping that by using the power of PM to filter and select all my images for this months project from across my collection I would be able to apply some standard edits on mass. Before individually editing each image.

I do not really want to create duplicates and do not really want to move the files from there original position.

OK, I understand.  I don't know how a tool that copies files to a single location would know how to put them back.  Do you know if Capture NX2 can work with Aliases?  If so, you could create a folder of Aliases pointing back to the original files and then the work would happen in place.

HTH,

-Kirk

Offline OldandGrim

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Re: PM + Automator?
« Reply #4 on: January 13, 2009, 05:52:10 PM »
Just did a quick test it did not recognize the alis folder as containing any images  :-[ I have not yet searched the net to see if anyone else has done it.

Any suggestions to such a work flow or is a matter of using PM to create a filter which Nx2 sees Ie assigning them a color for that project then going through each folder and filtering them out in Nx2. This is fine with the number of folders and files I have at the moment but cant imagine that large companies would move through thousands of folders to find there images

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: PM + Automator?
« Reply #5 on: January 13, 2009, 05:57:19 PM »
Just did a quick test it did not recognize the alis folder as containing any images  :-[ I have not yet searched the net to see if anyone else has done it.

Any suggestions to such a work flow or is a matter of using PM to create a filter which Nx2 sees Ie assigning them a color for that project then going through each folder and filtering them out in Nx2. This is fine with the number of folders and files I have at the moment but cant imagine that large companies would move through thousands of folders to find there images

I don't have any other ideas at the moment.  Sorry.

-Kirk

Offline TiggerGTO

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Re: PM + Automator?
« Reply #6 on: January 26, 2009, 05:08:05 AM »
Kirk,
A likely solution would be for PM to build some sort of list that it can feed to NX2 as the input for batch processing.  Obviously, this would require some sort of API you could use to feed this list to NX2.  I know you have tons of stuff on your plate, but have you ever considered talking to Nik about adding some hooks to NX2 so that the two products could work together more closely in a more integrated workflow?

Thanks,
Danny