I need to Watermark PDF files (batch operation) and rename: Suggestions?
Automator blows. I have worked for two days on this and can not make automator put a simple jpg image as a watermark on a selected bunch of PDF files and then save them as the same file name. This seems to be the consensus on the net too.
Any programs you can reccomend that would make this easy for me to do? I have to do over 500 files and there is no way I am doing this by hand.
TIA
Any programs you can reccomend that would make this easy for me to do? I have to do over 500 files and there is no way I am doing this by hand.
TIA
Comments
Is this what you need?
1. ask for finder items
2. store the names in a text file by Applescripting Textedit with the input from step 1. You will need to extract the file name from the alias and store that.
3. use the returned value from the Applescript, which is the pdf files and watermark them.
4. move the files somewhere
5. make an applescript to change the names of the files that come in as input to the names stored in the saved text file. I presume they will happen in the same order.
I have to say that Automator's linearity is a major limiting factor. They should have gone with a node based approach like Shake has.
With Automator, what you may need to do is the following:
1. ask for finder items
2. store the names in a text file by Applescripting Textedit with the input from step 1. You will need to extract the file name from the alias and store that.
3. use the returned value from the Applescript, which is the pdf files and watermark them.
4. move the files somewhere
5. make an applescript to change the names of the files that come in as input to the names stored in the saved text file. I presume they will happen in the same order.
I have to say that Automator's linearity is a major limiting factor. They should have gone with a node based approach like Shake has.
The biggest problem with Automator is that a lot of things just don't work. There are work flows out there that deal with watermarking pdf's, in fact, water marking pdf's is built into Automator (see PDF section), but it sucks and does not work correctly. You can't rename the file the old name and it rotates the PDF file from landscape to portrait but you can't rotate it back. Automator is totally lame in some areas.
Hmm. What is the process for watermarking a PDF? Is it not possible to do this via a shell script?
I guess. But how is another story. It would take me 10 times longer to even start that than doing each manually.
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macg...mark/index.php
Is this what you need?
No. That seems to be for images and not PDF files unless I misread something. Thanks though!
water marking pdf's is built into Automator (see PDF section), but it sucks and does not work correctly.
The steps I outlined are an Automator workflow. Step 3 uses the watermark action you are talking about.
You can't rename the file the old name and it rotates the PDF file from landscape to portrait but you can't rotate it back. Automator is totally lame in some areas.
Renaming back can be done by storing the old names in a file and renaming them once the watermarking is finished (I've no idea why they use random names in the first place). Rotating the files I'm not sure about but that does seem a bit lame if it rotates them all to portrait.
I agree that Automator is very limited and from what I've seen of it largely useless beyond the simplest tasks because you have to end up dropping into Applescript most of the time anyway. Maybe Apple will improve it in Leopard.
The steps I outlined are an Automator workflow. Step 3 uses the watermark action you are talking about.
Renaming back can be done by storing the old names in a file and renaming them once the watermarking is finished (I've no idea why they use random names in the first place). Rotating the files I'm not sure about but that does seem a bit lame if it rotates them all to portrait.
I agree that Automator is very limited and from what I've seen of it largely useless beyond the simplest tasks because you have to end up dropping into Applescript most of the time anyway. Maybe Apple will improve it in Leopard.
I will give that work flow a shot and see if I can get it to rename the files after watermarking. The work flow you gave me should work but the one I put together should work too. It is just that the one I put together wants to only do one at a time even though it says it will many of them. I will report back.
In better news, I finally got Adobe CS to do the batch processing of the watermark correctly. That will work until I get the Automator workflow established. It takes about 15 minutes to do ~500 pdfs (around 500kb single page files) on my 3 GB ram C2D 24" iMac. I can't wait until a universal binary is released.
Thanks again and keep them coming!