Handy Macro Utility

[Sean]

I just came across this program that lets you set up custom mouse and keyboard macros. It's pretty easy to use: with 10 lines of looped code I just edited about 2000 files in 5-10 minutes which would have taken me hours to do by hand.

I'm not sure if there is a more popular tool for this or if it is already so well-known that it wouldn't need to be mentioned (their forum has about 1.5k members so it can't be that well-known), but here's the link anyways:
http://www.autohotkey.com/

I always knew programs like this existed (from my gaming days), but never really had any use for one. Just thought I'd share as this thing has been a great time/energy saver for me and someone else could find it very useful.

[Cutter]

Did you write the file renaming code yourself?

[Sean]

Yes, but actually it wasn't renaming. It was adding a text file to a bunch of zip files with WinRAR. I hit the hotkey and the script would hit enter to open the zip, hit CTRL+V to paste the text file, hit enter to finish adding the file, pause to let the file paste, hit enter again to go up one level (directory wise), and hit down to go to the next zip file. This would loop as many times as specified in the code... I just left it on and watched it to make sure it worked and it did. I actually originally didn't have it run by hotkey... when I loaded it, it created an endless loop of running the program (due to the first command being to hit enter), I could have gotten around this by having it first go to the winrar window, but I just made it hotkey activated instead.

Now I'm using it with photoshop for editing the corrosponding images quicker: one hotkey will click edit, lauch free-transform, resize the layer and center it on the canvas and another will quickly end free transform, hit file, hit save for web and hit save. I could combine these into one hotkey but I like to make sure everything is good before I exit free transform mode.

The basic stuff is pretty easy, I use the recorder for the mouse coordinates: you hit record and it records what you do with mouse and keyboard then you hit stop and it shows the code for replicating what you did. I extract the parts I need and edit the code in notepad.

It looks like you can also convert the scripts to EXE so you can use/share them without the main program... pretty nifty.