Mac OS X 10.4 ships with Automator, a powerful workflow automation tool that lets you easily automate the operation of any AppleScriptable application. While Automator can control many applications right out of the box, it lacks the ability to automate Photoshop. For Photoshop control, you need The Photoshop Action Pack, which provides everything necessary to drive Photoshop CS, CS2 and CS3 using Automator. This update, for Photoshop CS3 only, provides a couple of important bug fixes as well as 2 new actions.

To use Automator, you string a series of "actions" together to create a workflow. The Photoshop Action Pack provides 90 Actions (86 in the CS2 version, and 85 for CS) that allow you to control a tremendous number of Photoshop’s functions. In addition, the Action Pack includes special filter operations that let you sort images based on various criteria including EXIF and IPTC tags, color mode, size, orientation and aspect ratio. With the Photoshop Action Pack, you can execute complex batch operations that are impossible with Photoshop’s own internal Actions. In addition to filtering by file properties, you can create branching logic for more complex functionality. While Adobe Bridge provides a simple interface for launching batch processes, it limits you to only operating on the files within a single folder. Automator has no such limitations, and provides are more ways to launch a batch process.

Because Automator can control much more than just Photoshop, you can automate entire photography and graphics production pipelines. For example, you can use Automator and the Photoshop Action Pack to batch process the manipulation of your images and then automatically upload the results to a server, or archive them to a CD or DVD.

Changes in Version 3.7 include a repair to the package’s Unsharp Mask action. Version 3.6 had broken the action, but with 3.7 it’s back to normal. Two new actions have been added: Set Blending Mode of Current Layer, which lets you control the blending mode of a layer, just like you would from Photoshop’s Layers palette, while the new Copy IPTC to Spotlight Comments lets you stash IPTC information embedded in the image into the file’s Spotlight Comments field. In addition to these changes, numerous bug fixes have been implemented, as documented below. Note that this version of the action pack does not include actions for any of Photoshop CS3’s new features. Those will be added in a future version.

The following actions are provided in the new Action Pack:

Version 3.7 is fully compatible with PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. In addition to the action bundle, an assortment of sample workflows is provided. The included 73-page manual gives you a reference for all of the included actions, as well as an introduction to using Automator, and strategies for building Photoshop workflows. Note that if you’re using CS or CS2, you’ll need to download one of the previous versions of the Action Pack. Maintaining three versions is simply too complicated so, unless there’s rioting in the street, from here on development will proceed with CS3 only.

You can download the Photoshop Action Pack for free using the link below. (All three versions are 11.1 mb) As mentioned in the installation section of the included manual, you might need to use this script to clear out your Automator action cache. See the manual for more details. If the Action Pack still doesn’t appear, then try this.

What’s new in version 3.7

Beginning with version 2, an entirely new architecture was introduced to the Action Pack. If you’re upgrading from a 1.x or earlier version of the Action Pack, then you’ll need to consult the documentation to see how things have changed, and to learn how you’ll need to modify your existing workflows. If you’re upgrading from version 3.0, then you’ll see the following bug fixes, in addition to the new features listed above:

* Hue/Saturation now allows a proper Hue range, -180 to 180 rather than the limited -100 to 100 that it had before.

* Added "Set Blending Mode of Current Layer" action.

* Fixed a bug in the Duplicate Current Layer action that could cause the wrong layer to be selected if you issued several duplicate actions in a row.

* Copy Data to IPTC now lets you specify a separator to use when appending data.

* Fixed bugs in Resize Image that were keeping it from proportionally resizing an image when the workflow only specified a single dimension.

* Changed Restore Original Image so that it’s now possible to use multiple instances of the action within one workflow. Each one restores the original set of images that were originally passed to the workflow.

* Added a "Copy IPTC to Spotlight Comments" action.

* Unsharp Mask now works properly. Due to an embarassing bit of debugging code that was left in the final version of 3.6, Unsharp Mask was always using hard-coded parameter values, unless you told it to apply its effects to a new layer. It doesn’t do this anymore.

* Some of the saving parameters in the Render dialog weren’t sticking when you saved a workflow. This has been fixed.

A Note About Version Numbers

While all of the actions in the Action Pack have a version number, at this point it’s only the version number on the Render action that really counts for anything. As the number of actions in the collection has grown, it’s just become too unwieldy to update every project. At some point, I’ll take the version numbers out of the other actions, but even the wieldy level of that task has been too much for me so far.