Desperate help needed

I need the help of a master Automator guru.

I have gallery website for which I am trying to create an Automator workflow. I am having a hard time trying to figure out how to get Automator to move back a level i.e.: once I run an action on items in a folder, how then do I go back to perform an action on the folder.

I need to:

  1. Copy a folder of images to another specific folder. → Easy
  2. Resize and save the contents as jpegs. → Easy
  3. Duplicate the folder. → Easy
  4. Rename and save the duplicate within the copy in Step 1 → Hard
  5. Make an archive of that duplicate folder (not just it’s contents).

My intent is to make a copy of an originals folder, make those contents web sized and compressed, then make a copy of the folder once the contents have been altered and then make an archive of that folder. Make sense? So we have the originals folder, a web folder and an archive of the web folder within the web folder.

Thanks,
Herb

Herb,

I haven’t tried it, but this is how it should work:

Get specified finder items (orig folder)
Copy specified finder items (with new folder name)
Get Folder Contents
Scale Images (If they are jpegs, any of the Preview actions will compress them, unless they’ve already been compressed by iPhoto, so scale images will also compress)
Get specified finder items (the new folder)
Create Archive (Don’t need to copy it again)
Move finder items (to copied folder)

If you need further compression, the demo version of GraphicConverter should have com with Tiger. The Convert into JPEG action for GC can compress your JPGs further.

Kevin

Thanks for the help Kevin.

I was using the resize and save as jpeg in the Photoshop Automator Actions from completedigitalphotography.com. Their save as jpeg names things sequentially but does not change the name i.e.: boat-1.jpg, star-2.jpeg…

Is the resizing done by Preview as good as Photoshop’s?

I’m going to try to implement your suggestion now and get back to you.

Thanks,

Herb