Chapter Nine. Automating Routine Tasks

I'm still waiting for the day when my computer will do practically everything I ask of it with no complaints. Even though technology has advanced by leaps and bounds these last couple of decades, we are still slaves to our systems. Sure, it's gotten much better than it once was, but we still have to nudge, click, and enter commands into our computers for them to understand what we want from them. That's why I'm excited when I discover a way to get my computer to take over a rather tedious or monotonous task for me. This is as it should be, since computers handle routine tasks rather well, whereas it turns out, we humans do not.

The Creative Suite happens to offer a variety of features designed to automate tasks and eliminate tedium. If you find yourself trapped in a vicious cycle of performing the same actions over and over again in a CS2 application, saying, "There's got to be a better way," well, most likely there is. With a suite of applications this mature and versatile, you can often find a command or feature that will do the mind-numbing work for you. The challenge is to know where to look for them and understand how to use them.

In this chapter, I've compiled a collection of features and techniques that offload the heavy lifting onto the applications: these tasks include processing hundreds of files, creating galleries and contact sheets, automatically setting up rollovers, and more. As a result, you regain your free time so you can get back to what's most importantbeing creative.