Tagged: batch

Batch convert Illustrator files to JPG, PNG or SVG format

If you’ve ever needed to batch convert a folder full of Illustrator or .eps files to a bitmap format such as PNG or JPG, you know the frustration of doing it manually (one at a time) with Illustrator’s export function. You could set up a batch action in Photoshop, but that’s almost more trouble than it’s worth. Pongo is a tiny application that does only one thing, convert vector-based Illustrator files to either PNG, JPG or SVG format, with a single click of a button. You simply drag your file(s) onto the Pongo Icon, and choose which format you want to save the files as. Pongo actually uses Adobe Illustrator to do the work, so you will have to have Illustrator installed, but it does its job in the background. Pongo requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher, and is completely free – though donations are accepted.

Using Automator to batch rename files

Often you might find you have a folder containing hundreds of files, and you want to rename them all. Obviously, you don’t want to do this manually, it would take forever. You could download a shareware application to do the job, but that’ll cost you. Luckily you can use Automator to make the process more efficient. Mac OSX Tips has a quick tutorial to show you how to batch rename files using an Automator workflow, and it won’t cost you a dime.

Relink folders full of one image type to another in Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign CS4 quietly added an enormously useful feature which allows you to link one folder full of images to another, including linking from one file to another with the same name, but a different file type extension. If you’re like most creatives, you probably build your initial layouts with comp images from Crestock, Getty or your favorite stock photo site. These comp images are typically low-res .jpg images. Once the layout is approved, you probably do a little retouching and manipulation to the images and save them as a .psd or .tif for output. This requires you to relink each image to the new file. And if those new high-res images aren’t in the same folder, it becomes even more tedious. If you’re using InDesign CS4, visit the flyout menu in the Links panel and select Relink to Folder… Here you can specify another folder on your drive to find the new images, and even tell it to link to the new .psd or .tif file. The best part is, you can have it relink an entire folder full of images at once. Nice! I hadn’t seen this feature mentioned anywhere, until this blog post at InDesign Secrets. Many thanks to them for sharing it!