A second version of the fantastic and free Photoshop CS2 Automator Actions has been released - and I am once again smitten. If you aren't familiar with Automator, it's an application Apple includes with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger that allows you to, well, automate the Mac OS X operating system. Think: "like actions in Photoshop, but for my entire OS." Automator allows you to easily drag and drop actions to create workflows that move information and files in and out of multiple programs, manipulating it along the way. As icing on the cake, Automator actions that you create can be shared with anyone else using Tiger, opening the doors for über-automation with your colleagues in the workplace. Check out Apple's Automator details page for more information if you need help wrapping your head around the concept.

This suite of Photoshop actions from Complete Digital Photography brings Photoshop into the automation party, offering a list of actions, options and features far too long to list here. The total list of Automator-enabled actions is now up to 68 with version 2.0, and new actions include, but are not limited to: Change Resolution, Color Balance, Dust and Scratches, Maximum/Minimum, Open Raw Data, Polar Coordinates, Posterize, Radial Blur, Resize Canvas, Smart Blur, Threshold, and much more. A series of bug fixes has been implemented as well, but check out the post at Complete Digital Photography for the full details of how these actions can fit into you Tiger Photoshop Automator workflow, and make sure you download the right set for either CS or CS2.

Photoshop Automator Actions 2.0 is donationware, and I urge you to toss at least a few dollars into the hat if you take a liking to these most excellent tools.