Automator / Script for Photos Smart Album

Question

poleary2000 Author

Level 1

18 points

Automator / Script for Photos Smart Album

Hi there, I'm looking to do something that could make my life a ton easier.

Photos does not have an Unfiled album. Meaning, a listing of all of the photos that have not been organized. I have a large library and want to keep it organized the way that I want. However, without a Camera Roll on the iPad or iPhone, I do not know which are new and haven't been placed.

However, in Photos on Mac, I can create a Smart Album of any photos not belonging to an Album.

Here is where it gets interesting and tough for me. I would like to keep an active Script that every so often, maybe once per night, reads my Unfiled Smart Album, copies it to a regular Album called Unfiled. This will then get pushed through to iOS. Thus, I will know what needs to be organized. Then, once I file that photo...I want to delete it from the Unfiled Album so I don't have two versions and can keep my Unfiled album clean.

Possible? Crazy? Thoughts? The whole purpose of it is so that my wife can organize her photos as she shoots them. She doesn't use the Mac. Saving a ton of organization later.

Thanks!

iMac with Retina 5K display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1), 4.0 GHz, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD

Posted on May 12, 2016 4:04 PM

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Answer 1

Rysz

Level 8

44,386 points

May 12, 2016 9:19 PM in response to poleary2000

Just select the smart album wwith photos not in any album to be synced to the iPhone or iPad you want. There's no need to move, copy, delete, or anything else. The smart album will be updated with every sync.

BTW, when you add photos to albums, the images are NOT duplicated. You can add the same photo to as many albums and projects as you want. They all point to the one and only original in your library.

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Answer 2

poleary2000 Author

Level 1

18 points

May 13, 2016 4:40 AM in response to Rysz

Smart albums do not sync to iOS through iCloud.

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Answer 3

Apple recommended

Jacques Rioux

Level 4

3,497 points

May 14, 2016 9:04 AM in response to poleary2000

Hi,

It's possible on El Capitan, i don't know on Yosemite.

Create a "Calendar alarm" workflow on Automator:

Create a workflow, like this:

Put this script in the "Run AppleScript" action:

----------

on run {input, parameters}

tell application "Photos"

set regAlbName to "Unfiled" --<-- name of the regular album

set smartAlb to album "Unfiled Smart Album" --<-- name of the smart album

tell album regAlbName to if exists then delete

set regAlb to make new album named regAlbName

add (get media items of smartAlb) to regAlb

end tell

end run

-------

If necessary, change the names of the albums in the script to the current names in the "Photos" application.

Save the workflow.

After that, Automator will create a new event in the "Calendar" application, adjust the settings of the new event, something like this:

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