Automation to convert artwork to PDF and save it in the same folder

macOS
1

Hi,

After two days trying to make my own action in automator …

I like to ask advice or maybe to tell me how I have to do it …

Automation to convert images to PDF, resize them,

rename with the foldername of the original and

save them in their original folder (what seems to be hard to get in automator …

I have a huge collections of LP and CD’s in itunes, with a lot of artwork.

Itunes only can copy PDF’s in it’s mediafolder, (it will not copy jpeg, png or other),

I want to convert all artwork to PDF.

Doing this, the artwork always stays together with the album, even when you remove the album in the finder …

First step is to convert all Images to PDF and resize them,
and eventually downsampling them

I want to use the “Reduce PDF” in the export window of Preview app and do a batch of all the pics files in the different album end artist folders and export them in the same folder of their original (or sources) and eventualy delete the originals …

With the search function in the finder I can easily select all pics in my collection.

The pics are all located in different maps and lot of pics have the same name like ‘folder’.

So I want to batch convert them into individual PDF’s and save them in their original folder .

I have tried several times in automator but my skills in it are not satisfied enough to make a workflow for this …

Secundly I want the several PDF’s in the Artwork folder combine to 1 PDF and save the new PDF in place of the ‘Artwork folder’ and place the artworkfolder in the trash, not immediately deleted it …

I hope you’ll find this a interesting challenge and very useable to keep a musiclibrary in shape.

I’m working with a macbookpro running MacOs Sierra.

Sincerely,

Pat

Who can help me with this?

2

Hi Pat,

Firat of all, welcome to the forum! :beers:

Before we start helping you with the conversion process (which absolutely is feasible) I’d like you to clarify what you mean with the following statement:

Itunes only can copy PDF’s in it’s mediafolder, (it will not copy jpeg, png or other),

According to this support site, the Music app (formerly iTunes) supports jpegs, pngs etc just fine.

3

Hi,

Thanks for responding.

To answer your question about pdf in itunes:

When you change the artwork to pdf, then you can bring it in the library,

like …

image
image706×97 71.6 KB

So it is direct accessible …

And you can combine the artwork to one PDF file

I thought when inporting a folder with albums of artists into itunes,

the PDF would be imported too …

but that is not the case …

I have tried to make a service, but automator can not do a lot of things

without the need using applescript

For the moment I use ‘jpg to pdf’ to do the batch

I can change dpi, dimensions and a lot of other things

So I can do a search in finder and select all images with certain specifications,

put them in 'jpg to pdf’ and the app will do a batch convert,

I can downsample them and lower the dimensions

and bring all the pictures back in the folders of the originals,

has the option to delete the originals,

but can not give the converted images the names of rhe parentfolders …

Still the combining of the pdf’s I have to do manual …

unluckely you can not use the cover pdf to bring that image into the the metadata of each song

So I have to control if the coverimage is embedded in the metadata

before I can delete it …

And then I want to bring that image to embed to a lower size around 30 kb

The problem with automator is that you can not give the destination to the same parentfolder,

problems to do batch and rename with parentfolder

It’s a trial and error thing where I can loose many days before I have a good result …

Hope my answer can bring some clarity