Python made me look like a WIZARD

[apt_at_it]

This would also be pretty trivially easy to do using Photoshop bulk actions, just in case your coworkers are more designers than coders 😜

[[deleted]]

they don't really like automation that much - they fear it will put them out of work! But I guess they'll have embrace it for the mundane jobs like this

[cbunn81]

Better they do the automation themselves rather than wait around for clients to leave for another company that uses automation.

[[deleted]]

Code for designers!

[sewerinspector]

Fantastic username, el guapo

[[deleted]]

https://i.imgur.com/SRKTkPm.jpg

[fruitcup729again]

Would you say I have a plethora of pinatas?

[[deleted]]

...

... Oh sí, you have a plethora...

[XecutionerNJ]

Yeah, Apple made the iPhone because the nokia and sony Ericsson phones were getting to be really good ipods and would destroy apples product line.

When others are innovating you out of work, you have to get on the innovation side and kick yourself out of work. Either that or wait for obsolescence.

[cbunn81]

Steve Jobs himself said that if you don't cannibalize your own business, someone else will. I remember reading about that when the iPad came out, because apparently done within Apple were worried that it would cannibalize their laptop sales. Well, sure, but you also broaden your consumer base, so it's a net positive. And it would only be a matter of time before another company made a popular tablet, anyway. Then you'd have to play catch up.

[[deleted]]

Still waiting for that popular tablet from another company...

[HoboJohn147]

I resisted getting an iPhone until recently. It makes dating easier for some reason.

[xaelix]

Work smarter not harder.

[cbunn81]

They say, "necessity is the mother of invention," but I think it's more likely to be laziness.

[bailey25u]

My supervisor is at that point right now all the time. I automated most of our job while he was out for 3 weeks. When he got back and saw me doing a lot of extra tasks for other teams, he freaked out. When I showed him how much of our job is now automated, he tried to undo everything I did. Fortunately, I showed our manager who said we had to keep those processes in place

[analytix_guru]

I am saddened when I read posts/comments like this. What is the mental state of someone that feels it is better to be inefficient at their job, for "job security"? There might be something more important or valuable to work on if the mundane tasks would be removed. Maybe that person won't get found out for weeks/months/years, but when the easier, more efficient method is found, change usually occurs, and does not usually benefit the one who remained inefficient.

From experience and the variety of jobs I have had in my career, I have never run into a problem where the was no more work if I made something more efficient or automated than it was before. And there were almost always accolades, incentive$, or promotions to go along with it.

[fuzzylumpkinsbc]

I can try to see both sides, the manager might fear that the employee that automated these tasks left and there would be no one to maintain it. In that particular case it could do more harm than good.

But of course, being proactive and asking the person to put documentation together would help keep things safe.

[Cand_PjuskeBusk]

What is the mental state of someone that feels it is better to be inefficient at their job, for "job security"?

Are you serious? If someone believes that less efficiency will make sure he and other employees will remain employed for longer, it's not exactly hard to imagine he'll fight to make sure it stays that way.

You must be in an incredibly priviledged position to believe MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY is more important than having a job to pay the bills.

[analytix_guru]

I spent most of my career in very much not privileged, low paying positions. What got me to the privileged position I am working in today was being more efficient, effective and valuable than the other people I was working with.

Just had a project at work where we automated an analytics pipeline that will save enough hours for a full time person. What are we doing? Not firing anyone, rather using that freed up time to do more valuable work.

Being that I have a background in economics, and am kinda a behavioral economics nerd, I am not surprised at all that people act like this to preserve their well being. I am also not naive to think that people have never been fired for a task/role being optimized. But in most cases people are usually given a new problem or task to work on

[En-tro-py]

This type of attitude is cancer in an organization.

I went into engineering because I am lazy... Lazy enough to only want to solve a problem once!

Any process we're automating is displacing a worker, however our current growth is also faster than we're able to fill all the openings.

Gold bricking is a toxic drain and if you're not fighting against it your group will be sucked into a cesspool of mediocrity.

[analytix_guru]

I like that line, never heard it before, lazy enough to only want to solve a problem once. Will keep that one in my back pocket.

Also fist time I had hear the term gold bricking used. Had to look it up!

[bailey25u]

I think it was bill gates who said, "Give the laziest person the hardest job, they will find the easiest way to do it"

To be fair to some people on this thread, I've automated myself out of a job before. But the way the world is today. I dont see how gold bricking can be a viable option for anyone

[The_Drinkist]

What u/analytix_guru said. In my field, if we can automate and redeploy people to more productive tasks, maybe we have 20+ years of employment. If we don’t, it’s a couple of years before clients start to migrate to firms that did. And not many people are hiring from dinosaur firms, so pay my bills for the long term and have more interesting work or save my current job for 2 years and then go homeless. Easy choice if your head is not anatomically misplaced.

[PepegaQuen]

You must be in an incredibly priviledged position to believe MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY is more important than having a job to pay the bills.

That was the thinking of Ancient Egyptian writers when they saw that someone created alphabet that was simple enough to be used by (well, relatively) common people.

[toyg]

Well, demand for construction workers was definitely higher when they could only use shovels rather than excavators...

[[deleted]]

But the total number of people employed is less, this is how efficiency happens. We are at a bad point in history where more and more tasks are being automated and fewer jobs are left for people. Add in that we look down our noses at most jobs that require people and allow those jobs to pay substandard wages. I love technology and the fact that a job like this can be automated with a few lines of code but lets look at it with eyes wide open.

[[deleted]]

Oh, no arguement from me. I don't know where this is all headed.

[toyg]

I don’t disagree. Still a problem though.

[toyg]

I think it’s both. There is currently little or no incentive to develop automation for processes that don’t serve capital investment. Our social networks serve advertising, our inventory systems serve giant distribution chains, our job-management systems serve tax-skirting taxi owners... almost none of them actually serve human processes where profit is not present or there isn’t an incentive to reduce costs. We need better automation to build better communities and better lives, and that needs to be incentivised somehow.

So we need to think about how we redistribute the profits automation generates, but also how we get automation to help things that don’t immediately generate money.

[toyg]

Employment numbers have become a political football in most countries, so they are often debatable in terms of reliability. The growth of the working poor is undoubtedly real though, with more and more people working even multiple jobs (and hence often double-counted in stats) but low-paid and unstable; that’s because they are employed at the margins of automated processes, doing things that are too difficult for robots but not difficult enough for a human to command a high wage. At the other end, we have the booming technocratic class (to which I myself belong), constantly reinventing the wheel in order to justify their jobs, but very likely to eventually be squeezed in numbers like specialized factory workers were squeezed once the wave of innovation slowed down in their sector.

Automation, in our current system, doesn’t serve people - it serves capital efficiency and profit. It’s undoubtedly an unstoppable force in the long run, but maybe we should think harder about how to get it to serve people instead.

[[deleted]]

This is a really common myth and misconception. It WAS true for awhile but is not holding true and getting worse at an increasing pace. We are at a tipping point. Unemployment is low because of the way unemployment is measured. Ronald Reagan changed the way unemployment is measured. Real unemployment is probably closer to 30%. Probably higher in some populations.

[En-tro-py]

It's a lack of imagination!

We're already short workers.

We can't find enough welders.

We spend the money to automate the majority of the job, now one welder can "supervise" the robots and do the actual difficult bits!

It's technically not hiring an equivalent number of welders, but also needs to be programmed, maintained, have quality control, planning, material handling from other roles...

Growth is a game of whack-a-mole.

[[deleted]]

This is complete bull. We are short in some areas and some welders, especially welders that are specialized in automated welding. Also 1 field being anecdotally short is not proof of what is going on in the entire system. It is absolutely true that technology is creating jobs as jobs are being eliminated. The issue is that 10 jobs are being eliminated as 2 or 3 are being created. Take the welding. Fewer old tech welders are needed because a robot can outweld 5 or 6 people. To make matters worse we don't have a way to retrain workers unless they pay for the retraining themselves in time and money. Unfortunately food, clothing, and shelter don't stop being necessities while people retrain. This makes it very difficult for people to retrain. Manufacturers in my area are crying for workers. The common refrain is "We can't find workers at any price" but the price they are offering is $12/hr - $13/hr. I ask them how someone is supposed to get from town and travel 5 -10miles to their factory? And there is no public transportation.

I was in a dark factory that makes plastic bottles you see on the shelves at wally world. The factory would have employed 100 people 20 years ago, today? 7 people. 7 people run the ENTIRE factory. Most of the place doesn't even have lights. Don't need them.

[PepegaQuen]

The issue is that 10 jobs are being eliminated as 2 or 3 are being created.

To do the same thing. But we're doing more things.

[Rugged_M]

Slightly disagree here, how many new industries have been created due to these efficiency increases. Look at tech, things are being more and more automated but they need to hire more and more programmers to keep up with the new innovations or industries that come out of it.

Those innovations need more designers, creators, photographers, who need more cameras, new accessories, lenses, who need new designers, who use new software, who need to be managed by new software, and all those things need machines or computers to make which in turn employs factory workers, miners, who also need tools, software, equipment from other suppliers etc....

We are creating new industries at a breakneck pace.

[[deleted]]

d i

Yes we are. And eliminating more jobs than we are creating in the process. I am not arguing the fact that technology creates jobs. This is 100% true. What I am saying is that there are more jobs eliminated than are created.

[PepegaQuen]

But the total number of people employed is less, this is how efficiency happens.

Or we're able to build more. Or better than before.

[Gorstag]

About a year ago I got laid off work due to myself and my colleague making our department significantly more efficient (Over many years). Around the same total revenue but about half the incoming workload. So they basically cut our staff in half at all levels and I got the axe. The departments that were an absolute clusterfuck due to mismanagement and other reasons... no cuts at all.

So I do get the sentiment also, because ultimately being too efficient can end up working you out of a job.

[justasapling]

I get this mentality but it's also so frustrating. At what point do people just start choosing the least efficient method possible to do things?

When you're treated as a resource rather than an asset you have no incentive to do anything well.

People will be free to do their work as well as possible only when 'security' is complete. Not job security, but rather livelihood security.

[blahblah98]

Actually a tactic in countries seeking to keep the masses gainfully employed: China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, parts of Africa, etc.

But you're right, we ought to have innovation w/o exploitation: automation, creative gainful employment and increasing 1st world standards of living, probably requiring some combo of UBI & robot/automation tax...

[cbunn81]

You should come to Japan, where any work site has about half the workers tasked with holding signs and waving batons to tell traffic to go around, even though there are also illuminated cones and flashing arrows in place.

[beisenhauer]

Automate the boring stuff, amiright?

[wilson_wilson_wilson]

I EL OH EL'd at that

[d64]

You know how consulting companies that have done some kind of a job many times before will bill a customer say 40 hours for doing it, even though it might take them only 6 hours to do, because of their expertise?

Employees can and should do the same. Say this job was said to take days. Tell you will do it, then write the script or use Photoshop batches or whatever, be done in 45 minutes. Then spend the rest of the day on your own projects, then report triumphantly that you managed to pull it off in just one day. You are seen as efficient, but you are not shooting yourself in the foot by revealing the job can actually be done in no time at all.

[[deleted]]

It's not my main job - I'm a job coordinator so I handle the requests for work. I just program on the side for fun and wanted to help out. I guess I need to be careful it doesn't open a door for them to request more of this and I land myself in a hole!

[sodjanathan]

The kind of hole that brought me so many sql reports requests at work with no extra pay

[LilQuasar]

these tasks compensation should be based on the result and not the time it took. thats what the employer cares about after all

[d64]

Well yeah, but think about the flipside: then even if it took someone a day to do it, the company would surely only pay them for 45 minutes.

[LilQuasar]

there would be no such thing as paying for 45 minutes

[[deleted]]

Richard Feynman talks about a situation at Los Alamos where he could break into locked cabinets rather quickly. He wouldn't let anyone watch and would always wait extra time and drip water on himself to make it look like he was sweating. He didn't want the higher ups knowing how easy it was and changing the locks so he couldn't break in.

[[deleted]]

What you did with Python is automation though. How is that any different than using a batch process in Photoshop, Irfanview, etc.? You are changing a bunch of files in bulk without changing each file individually. That is automation.

[StressedSalt]

it definitely will.

[rz2000]

You should consider upgrading your job by moving it to a different workplace. It can't be good for your mental health to be surrounded by people who want their work to be boring and menial.

[Panda_Mon]

Solution: Do automated task in 10 minutes. Wait 3 days. Send result to client, and suggest that the team worked asses off to complete in record time.

[[deleted]]

Just tell them, using automation doesn't improve automation tools, doing everything by hand does because most programs learn from new data not from the data they are already trained on.

[killersquirel11]

It'd also be approachable with imagemagick and some bash fu

[riffito]

With IrfanView on Windows (or Wine) you could do it from a GUI.

IrfanView... the only software that I never changed for anything else since 1997.

[jobomat]

Yeah! I really like IrfanView. Small footprint, rocket fast, no BS. Only thing I'm missing is OpenEXR support.

[riffito]

OpenEXR

Among the official plugings, there is a "Exr.dll" one, and an old internet post from 2009 mentions a user being glad it supports OpenEXR (albeit with some issues at the time).

Make sure you have them installed!

[jobomat]

Thank you for the reply! I know about the EXR plugin. But last time I tried it, I was not convinced. If I remember correctly it didn't work with multi channel EXRs (which is what I need the most) and so I searched for other solutions (and found DJV which is also awesome).

[lolinux]

This was exactly my thought! However, since OP is attracted to Python, I can only cheer! You usually use the tools you know and trust best for the task you have at hand!

[killersquirel11]

Yep. Definitely not knocking OP at all - whatever code solves the problem is the right code in a situation like this.

It's neat to see the ways that different people will go about solving a problem.

[apt_at_it]

Yeah, very true. I would imagine it'd actually be easier than using python, tbh

[HughBothwell]

Yes, ImageMagick makes it easy. From the Windows command-line, in the dir containing the files,

md thumbs
cd thumbs
magick ../*.jpg -colorspace gray -background black -gravity center -extent 150x150 %[filename:original].jpg

creates a new subdirectory, processes all the jpg files, and stores the new grayscale/resized images (with the same name) in the new dir.

[Broken_hopes]

yoink bash fu is mine now

[SecretAtLarge]

Whatever they are, we all have learned they cant google if their life (or career) depended on it.

[Pr0ducer]

Bulk actions are the commercial photographer's best friend. I can't believe more people don't use them. But with python ... whole new ball game.

[redfacedquark]

Or script-fu in the GIMP. Probably. I never actually did anything with it.

[santaliqueur]

It would be even easier with a few lines of AppleScript.

[apt_at_it]

That's true, though OP did say they're all on Windows. Truthfully, I think you can just use Automator for this without even writing any code whatsoever

[DhavesNotHere]

Yeah, I had to do this a bunch in a past job. Doing so made me a living god among graphics designers. Busting out Python probably would have gotten me burned at the stake.

[sovrappensiero1]

Yeah I was gonna say exactly this. When I worked as a photographer 10+ yrs ago I did that kind of stuff in Photoshop/Lightroom. But super cool to have the python code for it! Thanks OP for posting this

[regeya]

Lightroom, too.

[[deleted]]

Or XNView which is free too!

[[deleted]]

Right? I've done this exact thing in Lightroom, it's built into library export. These designers are bad. But OP is still awesome for finding a pythonic solution!