Undocumented new AppleScript command: "auto import"

According to its scripting dictionary, iPhoto '08 has a new verb, defined as follows:
*auto import* <specifier>
Start importing photos from the auto-import folder
(Specifier is the object for the command)
I've searched the menus, preferences, and help files and I can find no mention of this command or of any "auto-import folder". Anybody have any idea what this is all about?
Also, I don't understand what to put in the "specifier" field. A reference to an album to receive the imported photos, maybe? What are the options?
I guess I'm the first person who ever wished for better documentation of AppleScript.

FWIW there's also an Automator workflow that can be assigned to any folder that will import any photo dropped into the folder. You can also have the folder delete the photos after the import is complete. It's easier to setup than an Applescript IMO.
OT

Similar Messages

New AppleScript commands in 2.0.1

Hmm. I hadn't looked closely at the AppleScript Dictionary for 2.0.1 until last night, and was extremely happy to find several new commands!
duplicate v : Copy image versions (and masters) from album/project to album/project.
This means that we can now add Versions to Albums via script. After a bit of experimenting, you need to use the following syntax:
tell application "Aperture"
activate
duplicate image version id "xZ67XXgVTIW8wSqONQWFzg" of project id "6/Azi6r9RIu0nmzlICmIag" to album id "1v3zqhqQaWpiKwMOlnfA"
end tell

Whoops, I hit 'post' before finishing writing.
Without the Project ID for the Project containing the Version, it doesn't seem to work. Finding the ID is probably easiest via something like:
tell application "Aperture"
get id of first project whose name is "Madeira"
end tell
move v : Move image versions from album/project to album/project.
Similar to duplicate but I've not explored it much. I suspect the real differences will be when it comes to Project-to-Project stuff.
reveal v : Reveal an image version.
Very simple, give it a Version ID and Aperture will go to (and select) that image in it's containing Project:
tell application "Aperture"
activate
reveal image version id "whLYtjQSTm2itOjC1VLGYA"
end tell
This means that we can now find the 'original' location of a Version when we are looking at it in an Album:
tell application "Aperture"
activate
set selectedImages to the selection
reveal item 1 of selectedImages
delay 1
reveal item 1 of selectedImages
end tell
It seems to be a bit picky about revealing after getting the selection, which is why this script reveals twice. Also, if there's a search setting in the containing Project so that the Version isn't visible then the script will run with no error messages but not show the Version.
Ian

New AppleScript command in KN4 - woohoo!

It's only one addition, but it makes all the difference.
You can now set the body text of a slide via AppleScript. It doesn't sound like much, but it means we can now create 'complete' presentations via scripting, making my attempts at an Aperture to Keynote export far far easier - we can set the title of the slide to the image name, and stick whatever EXIF/IPTC info we want in the body text.
Example script:
set tBodyText to "Testing, testing!"
set tTitle to "The Scripting Daily"
tell application "Keynote"
tell front slideshow
set body of current slide to tBodyText
set title of current slide to tTitle
end tell
end tell
Ian
Message was edited by: Ian Wood

Hi, Ian,
Keynote (like Powerpoint) is, at root, a visually presented outline.
Choose View>Outline to reveal the "outline structure" of your slides in the left column of the page display. What you will see there (assuming your slides are not completely composed of pictures and animations), is a full outline structure of the text of your slideshow. Titles are Level 1 headings in the outline, and then each paragraph of the body text of the slides will be at whatever outline Level you made them.
The sad thing is that this outline respresentation is kept entirely internal to Keynote--despite the fact that outline structures are represented and created by many programs. So, if you wanted to make (or had a lot of) outlines in, e.g. Word or OmniOutliner or even a mind mapping program, you would be out of luck getting these outlines into Keynote to make presentations from them. And there is reason to do so--one's outlines may be repurposed in various way in one's workflow, and it is without doubt that there are many better programs in which to create and manipulate outlines than Keynote.
Similarly, if you wanted to get the outline of your presentation /out/ of Keynote. Keynote's idea of a handout is to produce thumbnails of slides--which I find entirely useless. What would be useful is being able to export the outline (e.g. in OPML format--a standard for outlines).
If your body of outlines or the place you like to work on outlines, is Word, you can work around this deficit by using Powerpoint as a go-between. To get to Keynote: open a Word outline in Powerpoint and save it, and then open that in Keynote. And for the other direction, export a Keynote presentation to Powerpoint, open in Powerpoint and save that as "Outline (RTF)" and open that in Word to get an outline Word document. You need a third-party solution to move between OPML and either of these apps.
For anyone who makes presentations with textual substance, Keynote's inability to move outline structures in and out is a glaring omission. (If you look at Steve Job's keynote presentations, they are all pictures and titles, not textual content to speak of. Maybe that is what everyone is using these things for.)
So, anyway, that is the issue I was adverting to. If Keynote gave one the least bit of access to the outline structure of the body text of a slide, one could Applescript one's way around this lack in the program, but amazingly, the only command which delivers the body text of a slide strips the outline structure off of it before you get your hands on it!
All Best,
Greg

Undocumented new command in iPhoto '08: auto import

(cross-posted in the iPhoto '08 area)
According to its scripting dictionary, iPhoto '08 has a new verb, defined as follows:
*auto import* <specifier>
Start importing photos from the auto-import folder
(Specifier is the object for the command)
I've searched the menus, preferences, and help files and I can find no mention of this command or of any "auto-import folder". Anybody have any idea what this is all about?
Also, I don't understand what to put in the "specifier" field. A reference to an album to receive the imported photos, maybe? What are the options?

Hans
I was hoping for an error message with iPhoto Library Manager not iPhoto. It will usually cough something up if it has a problem.
My TM certainly does back up iPhoto. I'm not sure why yours wouldn't. Try post on the TM forum here
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1227
for more info and help with that.
Here's my back up strategy: pick and choose as you think fit:
My Library lives on my iMac.
It’s Backed up to two external hard disks every day. These disks are permanently attached to the iMac. These back ups run automatically. One is done by Time Machine, one is a bootable back up done by SuperDuper
It’s also backed up to a portable hard disk when ever new photos are added. This hard disk lives in my car. For security, this disk is password protected. For this job I use DejaVu because it makes a simple back up that is clear and can be tested easily without doing an full restore.
I have a second off-site back up at a relative’s house across town. That’s updated every 3 or 4 months.
My Photos are backed up online. Personally I use SmugMug but there are many options including flickr. However, check the terms of your account carefully. While most sites have free uploading, you will often find that these uploads are limited in terms of the file size, or the bandwidth you can use per month. For access that allows you to upload full size pics with no restrictions you will need to pay.
Every couple of months I test the back ups to make sure they are working correctly. It’s very easy to mis-configure a back up application, and the only way to protect against that is to do a restore.
Regards
TD

Auto import, how to prevent LR from jumping to new pictures

Hi,
I would like to use my Nikon D700 together with the WT-4 to send pictures automatically to my laptop on events.
The pictures appear on the laptop's hard drive on a folder that is watched by LR's auto import feature.
Then my assistant would be at the laptop printing these pictures for customers to buy.
However, while testing this I cannot seem to disable Lightroom always jumping back to the latest imported pictures.
This is very annoying, because my assistant has to display the pictures to the customers, so she would be showing some pictures to a customer, and suddenly when I snap a new shot, the laptop jumps to the new picture and my assistant has to go hunting for that customers pictures again...
Is there some way to disable this?
Or am I taking the wrong approach to this?
I could off course disable the auto-import but in that case my assistant would have to go to the import screen every once in a while, which is also not ideal.
Thanks for any help!

I don't know a way to disable this.

"enable auto import" is greyed out in new cc

Previously, everytime I plugged in a SD card lightroom with automatically open up and start the import process. Since switching to CC, it isn't working this way, and the "enable auto import" is greyed out. How do I fix this?

I had this problem and I was able to fix it by editing the Windows registry (it was only a minor edit).
I changed the value of the following registry key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Adobe.AdobeLightroom64\shell\open\command
The value was:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.7\Lightroom.exe "%L"
I changed it to:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom\lightroom.exe "%L"

Updated to Mac OS X to be 10.6.8 & Safari DOA , downloaded Firefox 5 which auto imported all Safari bookmarks. I want to export from FF5, no find "Organize Bookmarks" command.

Updated to Mac OS X to be 10.6.8 & Safari DOA , downloaded Firefox 5 which auto imported all Safari bookmarks. I want to export from FF5, no find "Organize Bookmarks" command.

In my Library/Internet Plug-ins folder I have a file named Flash Player.plugin (it's 22.8 MB however, not 23.9mb) and another named flashplayer.xpt (it's 4 KB however, not856 bytes).
I am unable to open the Plug-Ins menu (the browser pops up but wont load)...is there another way to check for Shockwave Flash?? When I do a search for "Shockwave" on my hard drive I do find a plug-in named "DirectorShockwave.plugin" (76 KB)
Also...The "Open using Rosetta" checkbox was already unchecked

H: not found when insert the card of flash drive for auto import In Lightroom CC

when i try to auto import Inside Lightroom 6 or CC getting an error "H: not found" as soon as i plug the memory card or any flash drive to the computer. i'm using lightroom CC win 7 64 bit

Lightroom does reliably write capture time to industry-standard metadata fields in photos. If you are indeed using the File > Import command a second time to re-import the photos after first importing them into LR, what's likely happening is that you're not telling LR to write the metadata changes back to the photos. There are two ways to do this: 1) Select all the photos and do Metadata > Save Metadata To File, or 2) Select the option Catalog Settings > Automatically Write Changes Into XMP.
If this does not fix the issue, then you'll need to provide more detail about the precise steps you're taking, with command names and options.
direct Lightroom to change each photo file name to match its new capture date
Stepping back, re-importing the photos back into LR isn't necessary to rename photos with their capture date -- use the Library > Rename Photos command.

Lightroom auto import/tethered shooting strangeness

Hello, I'm trying to work out a tethered shooting workflow for the 1Ds MKIII that can keep up with a fairly rapid lifestyle shooter. I'm on a Windows XP system, 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 duo system with 3 GB of ram. I'm seeing this same behavior in LR 1.3 and LR 2.0 beta.
I've followed the steps Martin Evening outlines on his blog (Canon EOS utility in conjunction with Lighroom auto import) here http://lightroom-news.com/2008/02/07/shooting-tethered-with-the-canon-eos-1ds-mkiii/ and everything is working _almost_ smoothly.
When I fire off a single frame with the camera, it takes about 5 seconds for the Canon EOS utility to copy the file to the hard drive and for lightroom to see and move the file from the watched folder to the destination folder. This seems reasonable.
However, when I start shooting at a normal pace (approximately 1 frame a second) it seems like Lightroom stops watching the watched folder until I stop shooting for an extended period of time.
I would have thought Lightroom checked the folder at a standard interval, every 5 seconds or so. However, if I snap, say 40 frames at the rate of 1 a second, Lightroom doesn't realize there are new images in the watched folder until I stop shooting and let the camera's buffer empty out.
Has anyone else seen this behavior? Does anyone know if there is a registry hack to force lightroom to check the watched folder more frequently? Even better would be a hook, like a command line switch, that tells LR to check the watched folder immediately. The EOS utility 'linked software' preference could be configured to call this hook, and would result in much snappier performance.
Thanks for the help,
Andris

Hi Andris,
It strikes me that you have hit the maximum buffer that the combination of the Windows OS, EOS Utility and Lightroom are capable of managing. As you will have read in the report, I was able to fine-tune the tethered import to a rate of 3 seconds per capture image. This was with an Intel iMac 2.8 GHz duo core running Windows XP with 4 GB RAM. So a little faster than your Windows machine, which would explain why my download tests were faster.
Look at it this way. There is the usual buffer of up to 12 frames on the camera in raw mode, which when combined with the 2 seconds it takes to transfer say, 25MB data from the camera to the computer via USB 2. This means that you can shoot at a rate of 1 frame per second, but will soon hit the camera buffer first in around 20 seconds or so at that rate. it takes about a further 1 second for the files to auto import into Lightroom and as you point out, Lightroom appears to do this in bursts. How to speed that up, I don't know. What I do know is that any background activity will slow down the import. On a shoot this week I was busy building an export of high res JPEGs from the catalog as I was shooting more downloads and as one would expect, this did affect the performance.
It would be nice if the tethered shooting could be made faster, but as far as I am aware, this combination is the fastest yet and certainly faster than downloading from a card. As for Capture One, I don't know yet if they have managed to get tethered shooting sorted out for the MkIII.
Martin

Tethered/Auto Import

So Lightroom 2's out, but still no tethering support. What's frustrating me is that I can live without inbuilt tether support but please give me an alternative! I can use my own program to download images on demand from my camera (http://www.mountainstorm.co.uk/photography/Software/Software.html) and an "Auto Import" folder ... but it then takes forever for Lightroom to import them. Now I know its not actually the import thats the problem but the time it takes Lightroom to detect the new image. I've tried moving rather than copying the image into the dir. I've tried using a RAM disk as the auto import folder and all to no avail. I've even written a nice applescript which calls the open action the uses the UI scripting to click the dialog, change back to "All Photographs" and into develop, this is FAR quicker than auto import but the UI flickers all over the place as dialogs appear and disappear.
Please, Please, Please give me an import SDK, or at least an applescript way of importing a new photo without effecting Lightroom. All I want is a way to have Lightroom in the develop module, with "show highlight/lowlights" enabled and then prod Lightroom to add my new file and show it as the current one in develop. I can then use left/right arrows to compare this photo with others I've just taken.
Please help .. I've just managed to write a script which adds images directly via the DB, but I can't get Lightroom to show them without a restart so I'm obviously serious about doing this.
Arrrggghhh
Rich

I've just done a major update to my Lightroom Tethering plugin (v3.3 beta). It now uses my StudioTether for all camera control/error reporting and progress; this should solve the whole loosing your nameplate issue, amongst many others.
Most notably I've actually sorted out "enhanced mode", I've even changed the name as it got bad press :) its now called "custom extensions" and is off by default. I've actually got the SDK docs from Nikon now so it actually works reliably (for me at any rate). I've also added LiveView which it turns out works at around 60fps not the dodgy 10fps NikonCaturePro gives you .... although this needs some work as it can stall after a few minutes. Its currently up on my website:
http://www.mountainstorm.co.uk
Please have a play and report back. So you know my things to do list is:
* fix bugs
* fix liveview so it doesn't stall (might be a memory leak)
* allow recording of LiveView to file :)
* fix PPC support (I need to swap some bytes)
* get moderns Canons working (proving difficult as I don't have one)
If you have a problem, give me a shout and I'll see about fixing it (assuming work and the rest of my real life doesn't get too busy again).
Oh and after seeing Michael's video I thought "what a great idea", Im working on my own one as we speak. I didn't fancy paying for a program to record my screen so I wrote one (called DesktopRecorder) its a bit bare bones but if anyones interested its on my website :)
Good hunting
Rich

Imovie 09 How do I stop Imovie from auto importing video from iphoto

Imovie 09 How do I stop Imovie from auto importing video from iphoto.
Hi I've done a lot of searches on how to do this but no answers found.
Imovie is beginning to become really slow because of the large number of video's. It takes 3 minutes to startup. Editing is sometimes slow lot's of spinning beach balls e.t.c.
I would like to only import the video I want to edit and hopefully get a quicker Imovie in the process.
My Iphoto library is about 95 Gbyte in size.
My mac has 4 gb ram and I use the internal disk.
Any other ways to work with Imovie/Iphoto are also welcome.
regards

I won't get iMovie 9 till Tuesday, but based on what you said I may need to take some precautions. One reason I didn't like iMovie 8 is because it automatically imported everything in iPhoto library. What I'm going to do is create a new iPhoto library before importing the photos/videos from the camera. Or if you already have it in your main iPhoto library copy only the photos you'll use in your iMovie 9 project to the new library. Then start iPhoto while pressing the option key which will allow you to select the new iPhoto library you have created. Then I suppose that when you start iMovie 9 it will automatically import only the photos/videos from the new library.

Improve auto-import for tethered capture...

Simply add an option to have new images automatically inherit the develop settings of the previous image (all settings including crop).
Currently, when shooting tethered, I capture and adjust an image - but before I can go back to camera I need to create a new develop preset and point to it in auto-import settings (simply re-saviing the current preset doesn't work). However, this doesn't consistently hold the crop -- and so much commercial work is shot to a specific layout or proportion. Instead, I rely on the previous and/or sync function. Ideally, there would be a way to know that the new images would easily auto import with the same look as previous photos.
Thanks,
Andy

This would be more readily solved by adding crop to develop presets, which is useful for other purposes also.

Amazon MP3 purchases no longer auto import and cannot be added manually to iTunes 11

I purchase quite a bit of my digital music from Amazon and the latest track I purchased since upgrading to iTunes 11 did not auto import to iTunes as it had in the past. Additionally I tried to add the song manually from the file directory (dragging it into itunes, double clicking, and trying to add from the drop down menu in itunes). The problem is not with the file because I am able to open it in QuickTime and other applications. Is this a known issue or am I missing something?
nevermind, the solution in this thread worked for me:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4555469?tstart=0

I have managed to find a version of itunes 11.4 and I have the same issue in that version, so the new itunes might not have been the source of the problem.

Disable auto import function?

I want to disable the auto import function in iTunes, but can not find the setting.
My problem is I download a new song into a temp directory, immediately iTunes opens and imports the song into the iTunes library. I DO NOT want iTunes to import the song at this time. I want to move the song to my MP3 folder first.
This is a real pain because I have to first delete the song from iTunes then move the song file, then import the song again from the MP3 folder. If anyone knows a way around this please let me know.
Thanks!
na Windows XP
na Windows XP

Edit/preferences/import uncheck "show import dialog when..."
Charlie...
http://www.chocphoto.com

How can I use Auto Import to name files after the folder they are dropped into?

I'm camera tethered on a new Macbook Pro Retina, Lightroom 5, all latest software and OS. Using EOS Utility to connect and drop into a DROP folder. When Lightroom Autoimports, I would like it to rename the file after the destination folder. Capture One has this feature and I could have sworn I saw a drop down menu on one of the naming tokens in LR5 about a month ago. ANY IDEAS?

The closest you can come is to create a File Naming Template that includes "Custom Text" as a part of the file name. Then, you will have to change the Auto Import Settings to use this Template when auto-importing and manually type that folder name in every time you change folders. There is no "Folder" token of which I am aware.

Undocumented new AppleScript command: "auto import"

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for