A sample AppleScript and some technical observations on Photos

I am just an amateur at this too, but I have been playing with Applescripts off & on pretty much since Apple introduced them back in the pre-OS X days. A not-so-great side effect of that is I tend to reuse some crusty old code that I know works (or at least used to) instead of checking out what Apple has added to newer versions like I should. 😟

Hi Nic,

Your script worked like a dream and saved the day for me - I would otherwise have dumped Photos and gone for a 3rd party package as replacement for Aperture. Many thanks ! (And let me know if you make further improvements.... 🙂 )

Regards,

Sjur

Your script works very well for me. I'm delighted.

I do have a question and that concerns the processing of a large album. I haven't had any problems with processing albums with hundreds of photos. But I did have a problem when I came to one that had 1339 photos. Interestingly the script processed 1310 photos and then I got an error that said: "Photos got an error: AppleEvent timed out."

I'm assuming that the time out is because of the volume of photos I'm processing. Is there a way to lengthen whatever time timed out? And if not, since we're identifying a folder and then an album in the folder, how would you suggest I process just a partial folder?

Thanks for your help, I very much appreciative it. I'm trying to work with Photos but finding a few things that I wish were different. I've used iPhoto and then Aperture but since those are both unsupported now, I really can't find much of anything in the way of a photo library software package that lets me do what I've done in Aperture (and I'm not all that excited about editing within my library - except for the simple basic editing tools that are there already). But I digress.

Thanks

Art

Well, I don't know if my post above is true or not now. Maybe my computer was doing some other action that took away from the applescript running and that caused the timeout. I thought that if I put the following at the top of the tell script…

with timeout of (30 * 60) seconds

Tell application "Photos"

Statements

Statements

Statements

End Tell

End timeout

…that it would keep the script running for 30 minutes before it quit. However, as I tried processing an album that had 6994 photos, I found that after 30 minutes the script continue to run and process photos (only about 1500 or so - a long way from 7K) and it continued to run through 3156 of the photos before deciding to stop, a little over one hour. I still have half of the album to process but that's where I am now (BTW - the album is for the full year of 2013).

It was a little hard not knowing where the script was in relation to its progress though. And I did some checking and discovered that in Yosemite's system there is now support for a progress counter. I found an example that could be run from the script editor and perhaps be integrated without too much difficulty in the Photos replace title with filename script. But I tried unsuccessfully to make it work and went back to the original script.

Anyway, my issue with the timeout is moot, I suppose!

Thanks for reading.

Art

Nic,

Thanks for the response. I appreciate the time and effort you taken to write scripts and to give counsel to amateurs, like me, who try to do things that perhaps it would be better if they didn't. But, I am seeking to learn, now that I've retired, and dealing with my library of about 30,000 photos and my wife's library on her computer of about 70,000 photos (she needs professional help, I think). We both started out with iPhoto back when iPhoto was brand new and I eventually graduated to Aperture when it arrived. Just about 3 years ago I convinced my wife to migrate to Aperture because she was so frustrated with iPhoto. But when I became disillusioned with Aperture I returned occasionally to iPhoto and then to other software solutions as well. But when Apple decided to abandon Aperture AND iPhoto I was in hopes that the new Photos app would take the best of those apps and put it into one. But alas, I was very disappointed, but stuck, because there isn't much of anything else to choose from without paying a hefty subscription fee for Adobe Lightroom to get other programs I don't want or purchase some other very expensive tools that have so much more than I would ever ever use. So, I tested and tested again in Photos and am trying to make a go of it. My wife, however, doesn't feel that it would work for her and she's sticking with an abandoned Aperture. Sigh! But on to your response.

1. I do have photos I've scanned that go back to 1911 and I want them to have dates that reflect that. But replacing dates is a very dodgy experience in many programs because of the system not wanting to go back to a time before digital. But Photos does let me change the dates and they stay in their appointed albums nicely.

2. I have finished processing my 30K of files in Photos with your script. The largest album contained almost 7,000 photos. I did keep the album displayed and didn't do other things while the script was running. It processed every album with a time out, even the largest album. I was replacing titles and not skipping titles I had already put in place. I did notice on one album that the timeout error dialog appeared while I was away from the computer. I figured that it hadn't processed all the files, but in fact it did. I believe the error dialog came because I didn't respond to the dialog that said the job was finished. That's just my guess.

3. I haven't checked out your progress added script, but I will. I think that many years ago I created an Applescript for some jobs I was trying to do at my office, and found a script for a horizontal barber pole progress bar that I was able to integrate into my script and it worked great. But, I don't have that script anymore and Applescript has changed a lot since those early days. I always try to make sense of every aspect of a script before using it and nowadays there are things that have me scratching my head and wondering what it all means. Thank you for making available your modified script for me and others.

If you gotten this far in my post, thanks for reading! You've been a great help!

Art

Had an odd behavior with v1.2 script: On first launch it processed almost exactly half of the images in the designated album before aborting with the message "The action “Run AppleScript” encountered an error." Subsequent runs repeated this behavior (divide by 2) until finally there was only one image remaining, which was processed with a final pass. Anyone else experiencing this?

Otherwise, great script covering Apple's deficiency in this area! Thanks NicFletcher.

Nic, thanks for sharing this. It's been very helpful and has saved me so much time. I have a follow-up question though:

I want to share some pictures through Photos and have the description (which was originally the filename) viewable. Unfortunately, Photos doesn't show the title or description of a picture when it is shared. However, I am able to add a comment to each photo.

Is it possible to edit your script so that the filename is set as my comment in a shared photo stream? Or do you know of another way for to have the description viewable when sharing pictures with others via Photos?

Nic:

Thanks very much for the script. I titled 988 pics in one swipe. I do have one question, when I move any "titled" pic to a shared "folder/album", it doesn't bring the title with it. I did try manually entering a title for a pic but that didn't work as well. Any ideas?

Hi NicFletcher,

I have downloaded your original "Photos Filename to Title V1.2.scpt" and don't know how to add it to Photos. Can you point me to the right direction to accomplish that?

Thank you very much,

Hi, Script noob here. I tried a few of the scripts, and the app, and all don't seem to want to start. I tried selecting individual or groups of images, iphoto events (in photos), albums, nothing seems to matter. What do I need to do/select before I launch the service, or after?

For the dropbox long version, I get the welcome splash screen (This script will search for media items missing...) then: Album or Folder doesn't exist - exiting.

For the App, I got: Photos got an error: AppleEvent handler failed. (-10000)

Thanks.