Automator - wow!

I've just been mooching around my machine and thought I'd fire up Automator to see what it does.

Wow! This is great stuff!

I've spent hours this evening trying to figure out how to do a batch-rotate of image files from my (unloved, but IIS-running) Windows box. Now I've set up an Automator task which will do exactly what I want, and it took probably three minutes, including teaching myself how to use Automator!

I'm impressed. Will definitely play more with this.

It is awesome! i love it!

yes automator is very impressive! everybody should use it for one thing or another.

Any ideas how to get Automator to "see" hidden files when selecting files in a folder?

I want to be able to select a folder, then filter down to some specific files (which happen to be hidden, ie start with a dot), then do something with them. The workflow works fine for normal files, but not for hidden files.

Or to look at it another way, how can I unhide hidden files in a folder with Automator?

I'll take another look tomorrow but now I think it's time for bed...

I feel like the only one who can't figure Automator out. I have no idea how to get it to do anything.

try watching this it may help
http://www.apple.com/macosx/theater/automator.html

Yea, it's a neat program. I used it for the first time, two days ago, to batch convert 150 PNG files to JPEG format. It took about 10-15 seconds.

I'm still lost, even after watching the demo movie.

I'm trying to find a new way to organize my NEF files (RAW files from Nikon D70) from my CF card to a specific directory. Using iPhoto is now out of the question because it can't handle a lot of RAW files (I'm up to about 4,000 photos - with about 1000 of them being RAW files). iPhoto is just way to slow.

So what I'd like to automate is taking photos from my CF card, move them to a specific directory (Warp Core > Photos > 2005 > 06 > 23) just like iPhoto creates it's folders for the date which the photo was taken. I saw no way for Automator to create folders like this, or read when the photo was taken to be able to do this. And none of the workflows or plugins seemed to do this. I remember seeing a plugin that would convert RAW files to jpg, but that is something I would NOT want to do because taking photos in different settings will need different raw corrections.