Re: Scripting graphics manipulations, improving speed overGraphicConverter 4
Re: Scripting graphics manipulations, improving speed overGraphicConverter 4
- Subject: Re: Scripting graphics manipulations, improving speed overGraphicConverter 4
- From: Bryan <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 20:51:00 -0500
- Organization: Apex Radiology
Have your tried "convert" mode in GC? you have to run PreFabPlayer on it but it
runs batch, so it
doesn't open the images.
Alternatively try iView MediaPro.
Bryan Kaufman
Jeremy Reichman wrote:
>
I've got a largish script that I've written -- mostly to force myself to
>
make a complex AppleScript script and learn scripting -- that generates HTML
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index pages and thumbnail previews from images. I think it's rather slick
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considering I can't program well at all.
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>
One of my main goals was to make something that I could reliably run every
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night, so I could just drop images onto my Web server and have "magic
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happen" before the next morning.
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>
However, my script takes a loooong time to process the data (~1 GB of ~200
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kb JPEGs). I'm talking hours, about 10 of them. I'm using two external
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applications, along with Jon's Commands in places, to do the bulk of the
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actual HTML- and preview-generation. BBEdit 5.1 and GraphicConverter suited
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my needs when I was developing the script because they were relatively easy
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to figure out and I'd already paid for both. Surely, my code isn't as
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optimized as it could be (again, my AppleScripting skills are somewhere
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between novice and intermediate, and this is a learning project), but I
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suspect something else.
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>
It appears that GraphicConverter is taking several seconds each time it
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opens and does any work with an image. It visably opens the image in the
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GUI, and I see each operation -- running in the background or foreground
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(telling it to "activate") doesn't seem to make a difference. It may also
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have a memory leak or something that is leading to instability after several
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hundred MBs of files are processed. ("Geez, he's complaining about problems
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after several hundred megs?!?" -- I am cataloging my own personal digital
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camera work, and I have racked up nearly a GB's worth of images since 1996.
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Fun to organize all that!)
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>
Anyway, I'm considering replacing GC with something else -- anything else
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that may be faster, really. I don't know if there's an OSAX or another app
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out there (QuickTime?) that would just allow me to do the image processing
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and/or manipulations for the thumbnail previews and the tags I need to
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insert in the HTML file:
>
>
- find original horiz & vert resolution, to determine landscape vs.
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portrait orientation and scaling factor for previews
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- shrink/scale images, especially in a high quality way (I like GC's
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quality for this)
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- save scaled images to GIF or JPEG, stripped of resource forks to be
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Web-friendly, with a specific file name and location (so as to not overwrite
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the original file)
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- "auto level" the original and preview images -- GC 4.04's "auto level"
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scripting command does not work
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I also need to be able to determine the names (alone) of the original and
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preview images, but if push comes to shove, I can do that in the Finder
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instead. (Right now, I'm pulling all of the internal information about the
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file out from subroutine that calls GraphicConverter.)
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>
That's mostly it. Anything that's cheap (I'm doing this myself) and fast and
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scriptable will do at this point. I wish there were an OSAX that would let
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me do this without opening the file in a full GUI program. (I have a friend
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who has written a UNIX shell script that does pretty much the same thing in
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about 1/10 the lines of code and that's so much faster that I'm just
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aghast.) If there's a way to have a script process an image in GC without
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opening it in the GUI, please let me know!
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>
I will probably make this script available publicly at some point, too, if
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anyone's interested. I've tried to write it so it wasn't terribly specific
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to my setup.
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Off-topic: Overall, I'm getting disenchanted with the speed of GC, even the
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latest 4.04 version. Perhaps this is why I'm blaming GC for this scripting
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slowness, rightly or wrongly. But the program itself doesn't seem any faster
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on my dual G4/450 than my PB G3/400. The major UI functions I use are the
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image browser and rotation contextual menu commands, and they are downright
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pokier -- and get far worse when you access files over a LAN, as I'm doing
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much of the time.
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>
--
>
Jeremy Reichman, aka "Jaharmi"
>
Software Specialist III (Mac OS) / Instructor
>
Customer Support Services
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Information and Technology Services
>
Rochester Institute of Technology
>
Rochester, New York, USA
>
>
World Wide Web <http://www.rit.edu/~jjracc/>
>
Electronic mail <mailto:email@hidden>
>
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