Five awesome Automator tips

Apple’s built-in automation tool, Automator (in /Applications), is capable of performing wondrous feats, yet far too many people ignore it—believing their work wouldn’t benefit from automation or that Automator is too difficult to use. Neither is the case, as evidenced by these tips for the Snow Leopard version.

1. Access your media anywhere

If you spend much time with Apple’s $79 iLife and iWork suite applications, you’re probably accustomed to having your media close at hand via the Media Browser—a pane that displays the contents of your movie, photo, and iTunes libraries so you can more easily use these elements in projects. Yet when you want to access these files with a different application, you often have to open your Movies folder, iPhoto, or iTunes to do so because the pane is absent. It needn’t be, as a collection of Automator services makes the Media Browser available anywhere.

Travel to the Mac OS X Automation Website and download the Media Picker Services collection. When you install it, you’ll discover that the Services menu—found in all your Snow Leopard applications under Application Name -> Services—includes three new entries: Browse iTunes Library, Browse Movie Library, and Browse Photo Library. Choose the most appropriate one based on your needs and a Media Browser window appears, containing your media. Just select the file you want and drag it into a document.

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