auto assign folder icon as folder.jpg

I second that request!
In XP (shudders) the file image would be a collage of the pictures inside the file. I would love to have my picture file organized like that but I'm not going to go through the hundreds of folders, converting one file to an icon and then changing the icon for that folder.

You used to be able to place an image on a folder by
1) copy image to clipboard
2) get info on the folder (select folder, then go to File-->Get Info)
3) clicking on the folder icon in the upper left of the info window
4) pasting image

I think you can still do this in OSX but I haven't tried. Maybe Automator can make this process automatic for you, but again I have not tried.

Noah Robbin wrote:
You used to be able to place an image on a folder by
1) copy image to clipboard
2) get info on the folder (select folder, then go to File-->Get Info)
3) clicking on the folder icon in the upper left of the info window
4) pasting image

I think you can still do this in OSX but I haven't tried. Maybe Automator can make this process automatic for you, but again I have not tried.

Yes that works perfectly in Leopard

again, thousands of folders...that's a lot of copy and paste

Check out this thread
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1105260

In it they reference a set of utilities called osxutils which includes a way to set the icon via the command line. I'm guessing that people in the automator section of the forums can help you with this. It should be possible to run a script that does this automatically for you.

I'm afraid that thread was a bit over my head...
Thanks for the suggestion though!

I've played around with this a little (seemed like a fun task to work on).
I'm not sure what the best way to give these instructions is, so if you need more help with any step, please let me know.

WARNING: I've tested this as best I can, but there may be issues. I advise making a backup first and doing a test run.
1) Install osxutils (I used macports to do this)
2) Open Automator and create a new workflow with the following items in order:
Ask for Finder items select Type: Folders
Get folder Contents with Repeat for sub folders selected
Filter Finder Items with File Type is JPEG
Add Thumbnail Icon to Image Files
Run Shell Script
In the shell script you want to pass the input as arguments and paste the following into the text window

for f in $@
do
dir=`echo $f | sed 's/\(. )/./\1/'`
/opt/local/bin/seticon $f $dir
done

3) Save as application and run.

Some things to note:
You may need to change the location of seticon in the shell script if you install osxutils using a method other than macports.

This script adds thumbnails to your jpeg files, this seems like a harmeless side effect to me, but you should know that it is happening.

If you want to remove an icon, get info on it, select the icon and press the backspace key.

What if I have more than one JPG in a folder?

It will assign the last jpeg found in the folder as the icon. You can change the filter step to look for a specific file name instead of all jpeg files. For instance, "folder-icon.jpg"

is there a way to easily delete the thumbnails on the jpg files?

I don't know of one, but then again I'm not an expert on Automator.