Anytime you need to do that set of tasks, QuicKeys will magically do them for you at the touch of a key.

Have you ever imported image after image into a QuarkXPress document in order to make a proof sheet? About the sixth (or 60th) time, did you wonder if there was an easier way? You were right—there are much better ways. And they all involve getting your computer to do the work for you.

Your computer is an untapped tool for accomplishing repetitive tasks. The trick is to identify the parts of your job that are repetitive and get the computer to do them for you. Anytime you find yourself doing the same thing over and over again, you should ask yourself, “Can I automate this?”

There are various levels of automation. The easiest way is to use built-in automation tools. Many robust programs already contain ways to automate tasks. Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator have Actions, Microsoft Office has its own scripting language, and Quark has a powerful Find/Change feature that can save you time when you have to format or change text. Style sheets also make you more productive by letting your computer apply formatting for you.

The second stage of automation is a little more ambitious, but has the potential to save even more time and money in the long run. There are several automation programs that will perform tasks for you, including QuicKeys and Automate. QuicKeys www.cesoft.com is a macro utility program for Macs and Windows PCs. It operates similarly to Adobe's Actions, but QuicKeys can automate both programs and operating system services (Finder, Explorer, Chooser, etc.).

One of the nice things about QuicKeys is that it records your work instead of forcing you to lear how to program. To automate a task with QuicKeys, start recording, manually do the task you want to automate, and stop recording. Now test and edit the resulting QuicKeys sequence to make sure it does exactly what you want it to do. Anytime you need to do that set of tasks, QuicKeys will magically do them for you at the touch of a key. One tip: Write the keyboard shortcuts for your macros on a piece of masking tape on your keyboard.

Between Photoshop Actions and QuicKeys, you can automate complicated and/or boring imaging projects. In fact, you can use QuicKeys to automate work between Photoshop and other programs, including having a QuicKeys sequence start and run an Action.

There may be times when QuicKeys is not powerful enough. At that point, you might want to consider writing a script to solve your problem. However, scripting is a kind of programming and has a steep and large learning curve. Therefore, depending on the amount of scripting you need, you may want to hire a programmer on a contract basis or have one of your employees with a technical bent learn to script.

Macs have a built-in scripting language, AppleScript, that can control most programs and System software (Finder, ColorSync, Apple Menu Options, etc.). You can also use other scripting languages, such as Frontier and MacPearl, to script your Mac.

There is no one dominant scripting language for Windows like AppleScript is for the Mac. Visual Basic is a very popular Windows programming language, but there are many other ways to script different Windows programs and functions (DOS scripts, shell scripts, relative expressions, PEARL, Python, etc.). The easiest way to automate Windows tasks may be a program called Automate, made by Unisyn (www.unisyn.com).

Automate is like QuicKeys, but in addition to creating macros by recording your actions, you can also create them using its own programming language. Whatever approach you take to automation, remember that the more you automate, the more time you will have for “fun” work and the more consistent your production will be.