Photobooth setting/preferences

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Level 1

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Photobooth setting/preferences

I enjoy taking pictures with Photobooth, but I get really annoyed when I delete an image and the number of all my pictures gets thrown off. For Example, lets say I have 100 pictures taken over the course of a year. If I delete Photo 5, and then take a new picture, the new picture becomes Photo 5.jpg as a filename, but is 100 in the Photobooth thumbnail viewer. But when I go to the Photobooth folder and look at the pictures, Photo 5.jpg (a picture taken moments ago) is in the middle of pictures taken at the beginning of the year.

So my question is, Is there any setting, or program that will keep my Photobooth pictures in order. Ideally, I would like all of my images to be renamed if I delete a picture from earlier on. So that the number of the picture in Photobooth and the number of the filename (Photo #.jpg) are synced. Please let me know if there is anyway to make this possible. Thanks!

Macbook, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Jan 8, 2008 5:44 PM

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Answer 1

EZ Jim

Level 7

22,590 points

Jan 9, 2008 10:11 AM in response to thebuggalo

Welcome to Apple Discussions, thebuggalo

The Photo Booth application will not rename the image files in your ~/Pictures/Photo Booth folder. As you have found, Photo Booth is an easy-to-use application with little flexibility and no preferences settings. It was apparently developed for maximum simplicity with little regard to configurability. If you are willing to try something else, other applications that can make snapshots might offer different features.

If you choose to continue to use Photo Booth and need to view your files ordered by date in your ~/Pictures/Photo Booth folder, you can use the Finder > View > Show View Options menu choice to automatically arrange your ~/Pictures/Photo Booth folder contents by "Date."

If you must rename your files because you need to operate on files ordered by date in your ~/Pictures/Photo Booth folder, you will need another method. Here are the easiest ways I can think of to automate the process:

(1) If you have PhotoShop Elements or a similar image editor, use its "Batch Process" or "Process Multiple Files..." menu choice to rename your Photo Booth files.

(2) Use Automator to create a workflow to rename your Photo Booth image files. You can use the "Get specified Finder Items" or other items from Automator's list of "Example Workflows" to help you get started.

(3) Search for or create you own Apple Script to rename your files. AppleScript is not as simple to use as Automator, but if you are an experienced AppleScript user, it may be your first choice.

If you do not need to perform automated operations on your files, and if you can't make one of the above suggestions work to help you use Photo Booth, you can avoid the issue if you delete unwanted images by using Photo Booth's method for " Deleting photos." If you can ignore your ~/Pictures/Photo Booth folder and let Photo Booth manage it, the fact that image file names there are not in order would be irrelevant.

EZ

Jim

PowerBook 1.67 GHz w/Mac OS X (10.4.11) G5 DP 1.8 w/Mac OS X (10.5.1) External iSight

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Answer 2

CodLBi

Level 3

720 points

Jan 15, 2008 11:15 PM in response to thebuggalo

You can export your pictures to iPhoto, highlight them in the viewer (shift + click) and select the iPhoto icon to export them.

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