(If you haven’t read , you get an InstallESD.dmg file by digging inside the Mac App Store version of the Lion installer app. Alternatively, if you have a Mac that with Lion—so you don’t have the standalone installer—you can obtain the InstallESD.dmg file using our instructions for .)

Lion DiskMaker works well, and, in fact, creates a nicer bootable drive than you get by performing the procedure manually. For example, Lion DiskMaker places the installer’s Utilities folder at the root level of your bootable drive or disc for easier access to those utilities. And the aesthetes out there will appreciate that the mounted drive is called “OS X Lion Install” and its window looks like that of an official installer, complete with the large OS X logo.

On the other hand, Lion DiskMaker does have a few glitches. For one, if you wait too long to choose an option in any of Lion DiskMaker’s dialogs, you’ll get an AppleScript time-out error, and you’ll have to start the process over. Also, if you’ve renamed the Lion installer—for example, I added to the name of mine to indicate that it installs OS X 10.7.3—Lion DiskMaker will claim that the renamed app can’t be used to make a Lion-install drive. Reverting the installer’s name back to allows Lion DiskMaker to use it.

I mentioned the beta version of Lion DiskMaker 1.7. I’m looking forward to the final version 1.7, because in addition to letting you use a partition of a drive without erasing the entire drive, Lion DiskMaker 1.7 will let you create a bootable Lion installer on a 4GB thumb drive—something the current version (as well as our manual procedure) can’t do.