Batch processing means performing the same steps on dozens or hundreds of files, one after another. With the Repeat Extension, you can set up QuicKeys to ask you how many times it should repeat. But that won’t help you if you’d like the program to open 100 Photoshop files individually, process each one, and save the file into another folder; the process breaks down in the Open File box. QuicKeys can certainly open the first file, process it, save it, and then choose Open from the File menu to get the next file. But then the Open File box appears. How can you prevent QuicKeys (before version 3.5) from opening the first file again? How can you ensure that it opens the second file?
If only the Mac would, upon opening this Open File box, remember which file you last opened and have it highlighted. (Then the macro could press the down-arrow key just once, and it would highlight the next file.) Instead, the Mac always highlights the first file in the list.
We can think of two ways around this problem. First, you can use Super Boomerang, part of the Now Utilities package (included with this book); it automatically highlights the last file you opened in an Open File list — not the first one.
Our second solution is sneakier but just as effective: After each file has been processed, have QuicKeys close the Photoshop window, revealing the Finder window (containing all your files to be processed) behind it! Each time, have your repeating QuicKeys drag the first file (the one just processed) out of the list into another folder; then double-click at the top of the original folder’s list — thus opening the new first file in the list! In other words, you’re letting the Finder reset the list, while QuicKeys repeatedly opens the first item there. See Figure 22-6.
Figure 22-6: Suppose that you have a folder full of Word files, each of which needs to be formatted similarly. Make a QuicKey that opens the top file in the list, processes it in Word, saves it, closes the window, returns to the Finder, and then drags the top file into another folder (left). The remaining files in the folder slide up (right), so that when your macro repeats, the second document is at the top of the Finder-window list.
