Mike DelGaudio

As I mentioned in Part 1, I am currently digitizing all my family’s photo albums. This is to try and stop the deterioration process, and so that each of my siblings can have ca copy of the albums. In Part 1 we covered how to get the full page scans into Google’s Photo Software Picasa, and eased our repetition a bit using a macro recorded with AutoHotKey. Now that we have full pages of albums scanned, we need to separate each of the photos into individual shots.

To complete this you should

In Picasa, that would involve the following steps in the individual photo screen

1. Click Crop
2. Click and Drag the outline of the individual crop
3. Apply the crop
4. File, Save A Copy
5. Undo the Crop.
6. Repeat.

Many of those steps can be easily automated. Pretty much everything but the click and drag portion. Let’s see how. Step 1: Create the Macro. To make this easier, we are going to record our macro beginning at step 3, then record all the way back around to step 1, make sense?

Here is a little video to show what I mean :

1. Open AutoScriptWriter
2. Set up Picasa by getting to the individual photo screen, clicking crop, then clicking and dragging around one of the photos.
3. Click Record on Auto Script Writer.
4. Click “Apply” on the Picasa crop function.
5. When the cropped photo appears in the photo screen, click File then Save A copy. This automatically makes a copy of the cropped area and saves it to a new file in the same directory.
6. Click “Undo Crop” to get the full album page back.
7. Click the “Recrop” button to get you back the crop screen ready to click and drag the next photo.
8. Click “Stop” on AutoScriptWriter.

Step 2: Associate with a Key Combination. Once you have recorded the macro, associate your macro to a particular key stroke. I use Ctrl+Alt+\ for mine (so that I can keep pne hand on the mouse, and one hand ready to crop.)

1. In the Auto Script Writer window, where you see the steps the script recorded, place your cursor on the the First line, and hist enter to create a new blank line.
2. On this new line, type “^!\::” (without the quotes). This is the syntax to associate with a keystroke. Here the ^ is for Ctrl, and ! is for Alt, \ is for the \ key, and :: indicates the end of the sequence.
3. Save the Script in a memorable place (I have created a folder in my Documents called “My Hot Keys”) and save it with a memorable name like “Picasa Crop”

Now whenever you are cropping photo albums, go to this folder, and double click the script to load in the the system tray. Step 3: Start Cropping The first photo you want to crop, you will need to start by clicking “crop” then clicking and dragging. (Remember our macro starts with clicking “Apply”, right?) Then press Ctrl+Alt+\ To kick off the macro. Watch in stunned satisfaction as AutoHotKey performs it’s miracle, and sets you up to click and drag the next photo.

technorati tags:picasa, photo, autohotkey, automation, archive, macro, squelly