A sample AppleScript and some technical observations on Photos

I've been playing with AppleScript to help me tidy up my library. I wrote one script for another discussion, but I share it here, because it will give those that use AppleScript as an amateur (like myself) some clues on how to get a media item and do something with it. The documentation says that you can also process moments, but I haven't got that far yet!

There are some scripts about that use "get selection" but I have found this to be very buggy... as has the developer of Duplicate Annihilator. So, I recommend that you add the photos you want to process into an album and then use AppleScript on that album. Note: Applescript will not process SmartAlbums. You can use a SmartAlbum to get the selection of items you want... and then select all and add to a temporary album for AppleScript to use.

You can download this script from dropbox here, but I've also pasted the script below:

I personally don't run this script as an application or service... I prefer to open it in Script Editor and just hit run (or CMD/R). Make sure you have Photos open - I haven't put any checks in the script to wait for the app to open and be available to AppleScript.

Final warning: something odd about Photos: If you change the title of an item (either manually or with this script) it will not get written to the Photos database until you close the application. So, if you have changed any titles in preparation for running this script, make sure you close and reopen Photos. Also, if you are going to re-process any items that this script processed, you should as a precaution also close and reopen Photos. (BTW, for keywords, this is not a problem. They get written immediately.

-- Photos Filename to Title V1.0

-- Nic Fletcher - 17 April 2015

-- For a given album in a given folder, check if the image / video has a title

-- If not, make the title the same as the file name

-- NOTE: Photos does NOT write titles to the database (or at least so AppleScript

-- can see) until the application is closed. So, even after running the script

-- where you will see the new Titles displayed, if you re-run the script it will

-- reprocess the items. So always CLOSE and REOPEN if you have played with titles

-- before running this script.

tell application "Photos"

-- Album name you want to process. You could use a temp album at the top

-- level, and then you won't need to change the script every time

set albName to "Test Album"

-- If the albName is at the top level in Photos (i.e. not in a folder) then set this

-- to "True" - Set it to false to allow the script to fidn the album in a folder.

-- NOTE: This particular script will not process multiple levels in folders.

set topLevel to false

-- If the albName is in a folder (only one deep), set the name of the folder

-- here and make sure the topLevel varaiable is set to "False"

set albParent to "iPhoto Events"

if topLevel is false then

if existscontaineralbName of containeralbParent then

set myContainer to containeralbName of containeralbParent

--display dialog "SecondLevel Variable set"

else

display dialog "Folder or Album doesn't exist - Exiting" buttons ¬

"OK" with iconcautiondefault button "OK"

return

end if

else

if existscontaineralbName then

set myContainer to containeralbName

--display dialog "TopLevel variable set"

else

display dialog "Album doesn't exist - Exiting" buttons ¬

"OK" with iconcautiondefault button "OK"

return

end if

end if

set myCount to count of media items in myContainer

display dialog "About to process " & myCount & " item(s) in the container" as text

set n to 0

repeat with img in every media item of myContainer

set title to the name of img

if (count of title) = 0 then -- See comment about bug at bottom

set the name of img to the filename of img

set n to n + 1

end if

end repeat

display dialogn & " item(s) were processed" as text

end tell

-- Photos bug: If a title or keyword is deleted, Photos till thinks one exists!

-- So, need to count the number of characters to determine if it exists.

-- If a title or keyword never existed in Photos, then it will return not existing

Firstly, please find here an updated version of the script that how has a few warning messages to make sure the right albums are selected, and will also NOT include the file extension.

Furthermore, I've added an option (that you need to set at the top of the script) to use an "Overwrite" mode, so anyone who ran an earlier version of this script that gave the file extension as well.

I've only tested with up to 50 items in an album, and I only have limited time for testing, but it should work with larger numbers, but personally, I would go up in increments of 100 before choosing a large number.

You can get it from my dropbox: Photos Filename to Title V1.2.

To anyone using this script for first time, please read the notes for my first posting at the top of this thread and the comments in the script.

As to your second question:

1. Firstly, I'm not / wasn't an Aperture user (although I know about messed up libraries!).
2. But if, when using the Get Info window in Photos, there is no description, then there is no description! Because all I can see in AppleScript is what you can see in Photos.
3. I suspect the descriptions are not included when uploading pictures to iCloud, and that is your problem.
4. So, I think you'd be better off tidying up your Aperture / iPhoto library and then converting to Photos (all my descriptions came across from iPhoto).

FYI, I'm pasting below the Photos Dictionary section for a Media Item in Photos. These are the only things AppleScript can see (and those that are marked "r/o" are read-only, which means an AppleScript can read that information for a given item, but not update or change it.

Hope this helps!

Nic.

Hi ArthurAJ!

Thanks for your feedback.

(For new readers, see the sample scripts at the end of this post)

Before I answer your specific questions in your two posts, I'd like to say that in the beginning, I suffered very much with the change from iPhoto to Photos (I've never used Aperture, so I cannot comment). But, now I love Photos. But it took some time. There are some quirks, and some big omissions (e.g. not being able to add a geo location) and from the Apple Script side it is very buggy. I'm trying hard not to say that Apple know best, and certainly the first release of Photos is far from perfect, but now with a couple of months usage, I've got used to it.

In summary: If I know the date and / or the location, then I can find my photos pretty quickly. There's no real need to have titles (unless you have historic photos form the days when we used name our photo files in Finder as a way of cataloging them). I confess, that I do set up a Smart Album for the current month, and then when the new month starts I copy the contents to a regular album, so I can replicate the old Photo Stream monthly albums). But otherwise, I realise that (just Google with Gmail) when searching is so easy and powerful, wasting time with cataloging is not really that useful.

But anyway (I also - like you - seem to digress), to ANSWER your QUESTIONS:

1. The AppleEvent timeout seems to be a big issue with the AppleScript implementation with Photos. The whole AppleScript side of photos is simply somewhat buggy in my opinion.
   
2. The single biggest thing you can do to minimise its effect is to ALWAYS have the album you are processing displaying in Photos while you run any script. It makes a huge huge difference.
   I haven't tested more than 1500 photos in one album, so maybe even making sure that Photos is open and displaying the album you are processing still won't solve these bugs if the album is extra large.
   
3. Your question on how to split an album: I've done this simply by selecting say, the first thousand items, and then adding the to a temporary album and then running a script against the temporary album. And then emptying the album and adding the next thousand items. And so forth.
   
4. As for the timeout and adding timeouts to Apple Script, my limited testing has shown it makes little difference. This is substantiated for many other posts in forums. If making sure the album being processed is being displayed in Photos while the script is running doesn't make a difference, then you will simply need to manually create a temp album with a subset of the main album to process against (point #3 above).
   
5. As to the process indicator, I have added one to the script you are using. You can download it here: Photos Filename to Title V1.3
   
   The process indicator in Yosemite cannot be used in a dialog box for a script, so your will see it on the status bar of Script Editor (i.e. the bottom).
   
6. I also created and posted a "sample / test" script a while back to share with amateurs like myself my findings with Photos and AppleScript. For some reason I can't find that post, but you can see that script here: Testing with Photos V1.0
   
   This is not a specific script to do anything, but that rather a sharing of my experiences. It's a script with different sub routines to share my (trial and error) experiences with Photos and Applescript. I can't find my original post with this, but you take a look and learn from that script here: Testing with Photos V1.0
   

Good Luck!

Nic.

Interesting!

And someone else on another discussion has run straight into this problem. I stupidly (even though I knew there was a difference in the app), only tested with photos that I had manually taken away the title from.

So, I will need to modify with an extra test.

However, FYI, I did try with the

title = "" then

and I found this failed. That is why I used count of the string in my script.

Apologies... despite my mentioning the difference between a title or Keyword that has never been set or has simply been deleted by the user, I didn't test with both situations. So, now here is V1.1 of my script.

(BTW, this bug is quite serious, because when using a SmartFolder to search for all photos without a keyword, it will not include photos for which I removed all keywords - and I guess the same for the titles. So, it's much more than an AppleScript issue).

Sorry, but Apple doesn't allow one to edit a post after a certain time after posting, so I have to re-post it!

Here is a download link from Dropbox: Photos Filename to Title V1.1

And here is the modified script to test for both situations of a title:

-- Photos Filename to Title V1.1

-- Nic Fletcher - 17 April 2015

-- For a given album in a given folder, check if the image / video has a title

-- If not, make the title the same as the file name

-- NOTE: Photos does NOT write titles to the database (or at least so AppleScript

-- can see) until the application is closed. So, even after running the script

-- where you will see the new Titles displayed, if you re-run the script it will

-- reprocess the items. So always CLOSE and REOPEN if you have played with titles

-- before running this script.

tell application "Photos"

-- Album name you want to process. You could use a temp album at the top

-- level, and then you won't need to change the script every time

set albName to "Test Album"

-- If the albName is at the top level in Photos (i.e. not in a folder) then set this

-- to "True" - Set it to false to allow the script to fidn the album in a folder.

-- NOTE: This particular script will not process multiple levels in folders.

set topLevel to true

-- If the albName is in a folder (only one deep), set the name of the folder

-- here and make sure the topLevel varaiable is set to "False"

set albParent to "iPhoto Events"

if topLevel is false then

if existscontaineralbName of containeralbParent then

set myContainer to containeralbName of containeralbParent

--display dialog "SecondLevel Variable set"

else

display dialog "Folder or Album doesn't exist - Exiting" buttons ¬

"OK" with iconcautiondefault button "OK"

return

end if

else

if existscontaineralbName then

set myContainer to containeralbName

--display dialog "TopLevel variable set"

else

display dialog "Album doesn't exist - Exiting" buttons ¬

"OK" with iconcautiondefault button "OK"

return

end if

end if

set myCount to count of media items in myContainer

display dialog "About to process " & myCount & " item(s) in the container" as text

set n to 0

repeat with img in every media item of myContainer

set title to the name of img

if not (exists (title)) or (count of title) = 0 then -- See comment about bug at bottom

set the name of img to the filename of img

set n to n + 1

end if

end repeat

display dialogn & " item(s) were processed" as text

end tell

-- Photos bug: If a title or keyword is deleted, Photos till thinks one exists!

-- So, need to count the number of characters to determine if it exists.

-- If a title or keyword never existed in Photos, then it will return not existing

You're right... my bad memory.

I actually discovered this with the "Description" field, where I tested in Photos app with a Smart Folder to give me all items where description is not empty... and I got results of photos where I had deleted the description.

But it seems to be happening with Descriptions and Titles, and probably would with Keywords if they had that option in the Smart Folder.

Here is the list of properties for a Media Item - See previous post (I forgot to paste).

keywords (list of text) : A list of keywords to associate with a media item

name (text) : The name (title) of the media item.

description (text) : A description of the media item.

favorite (boolean) : Whether the media item has been favorited.

date (date) : The date of the media item

id (text, r/o) : The unique ID of the media item

height (integer, r/o) : The height of the media item in pixels.

width (integer, r/o) : The width of the media item in pixels.

filename (text, r/o) : The name of the file on disk.

altitude (real, r/o) : The GPS altitude in meters.

location (list of real, r/o) : The GPS latitude and longitude, in an ordered list of 2 numbers. Latitude in range -90.0 to 90.0, longitude in range -180.0 to 180.0.