Bottom line is that this gives me tremendous flexibility with my photos for future use and also enables me to access my photos from anywhere while easily sharing old and new photos.
Pre-requisites:
- Hazel, of course
- Dropbox account
- A Flickr account
- Exiftool by Phil Harvey (http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/)
- Python must be installed
Note: I am not including how I moved all my photos from iPhoto into Dropbox, however, I will mention that the easiest way I found was to actually leverage Aperture (which I already had) to open the iPhoto database and then change all photos to whats called referenced masters. This enables you to take them out of the database file and export them into folder structure format.
Part 1: Folder Set-up and General Workflow
Downloads: Hazel Rules
The very first thing you should do is create a folder(s) which will serve as your top level directory for housing your photos and videos. In my case, I keep photos and videos separate so I have a Main_Photos and Main_Videos folders. Next, if you are like me and my family, generally you will have multiple people taking photos and videos (P&V) and then you will want to import them into your photo/video library. The first part of the workflow involves creating separate folders in my Dropbox account for each person who might add P&V to our library. I do this because I want to tag the files by author automatically as it helps with discovery later on (a big portion of my workflow). I use an app on our iPhones for automatically importing the P&V into the correct folder which makes this happen seamlessly (more on this later). Next step is to create a folder for reviewing the files. While we have a DSLR, a majority of our photos and videos come from phones and as such, many of the files are not worth keeping. In order to keep our library cleansed, no file can be included in the master library until it has been reviewied. This can be done by anyone in the family. Finally a folder is created to copy the approved pictures to so it can be uploaded to Flickr and then deleted (easier this way for a variety of reasons mostly related to the script I use for auto Flickr importing). Screenshots of my Hazel folders and Dropbox folders are below.
Part 2: Processing Photos & Videos
As I mentioned in Part 1, the first step is importing all the P&V off our cameras and phones into their respective folders (by name). Then within each person’s folder, here is what is happening:
- Dive into subfolders
- Delete all screenshots (no one is taking screenshots unless by accident)
- Use Exiftool to rename the file based on the date taken (all my files are named by the date taken)
- Tag with Author name by using the name of the Folder (ie Johns_Photos tags as John)
- Using exiftool to use the filename to then reset the modify date of the file (this is the system modified date which might get altered as part of this process, which I don’t want as sites like Flickr may use this to organize/sort the photos)
- Color the files based on type (images vs video) before they are moved into the Review folder so I can easily distinguish between the two)
Note: For step 4, the script is based on the folder naming convention I am using so if yours is different, you will need to modify the script. You probably could also use Hazel here but I didn’t.
Part 3a: Review the Photos & Videos
This is pretty simple. I look at each image and video and decide whether or not I want to keep it. If so, I simply remove the color label (added in Part 2) which kicks off Hazel to do the following:
- Run another exiftool command to use the filename to change the modify date (just making sure it remains correct)
- Move to my main Main_Photos or Main_Videos folder sorting into a subfolder by year (ie 2013 or 2014)
- In each of those folders from 2, the files are further sorted into month within the year (I kept this process separate from the above sorting as I sometimes turn it off when I am adding lots of photos at once just to ensure everything is working as it should). You could easily just combined steps 2 and 3.
Part 3b: Adding Keywords
Downloads: Keywords applescript
I put this as part 3B just to digress on Keywords for one second. In thinking about how I wanted to organize my files, I decided against using the structure advocated by many where you create a folder for the event or album you want to collect photos and videos under. Instead, I use the very simple format where all files are organized into years and the subfolders by months. I did this because I find it to be the most organizationally efficient and future proof should I want to change my structure. Instead, I tag with keywords stored into the files metadata for creating these albums and events. In OSX, I create Smartfolders based on these keywords to organize my photos on the main desktop (Smart Folders/Smart search enables me to keep files in same location but pull together into a faux folder) and in Flickr, it organizes files by keywords so you can see all the associated files (you can even create actual albums off of Keywords if you want). To do this as easily as possible in OSX, I leveraged an applescript i found, enhanced it, and installed it as a service that allows me to select a group of photos and videos and tag with a keyword(s). It generates a pop-up box where I can type in the keywords then uses exiftool to update the metadata. I actually do this step before 3A. Below is a screenshot of the script in automator.
Part 4: Auto-upload to Flickr
I wrote a whole separate post on auto-uploading to Flickr. Rather than extend this post more, I am just going to link to that post for the details however the one Hazel rule is included above in the download. Basically, you need to have Python installed and you need to run through a process to get some keys and credentials from Flickr, and then authenticate once with them, before this will work. I chose Flickr because of the unlimited storage (1TB) and because it was the only site that allowed me to see the detailed EXIF data for the files (which I used for searching and sorting). The rule simply copies the final photo or video to a folder where it is uploaded to Flickr. Once that is done, the file is deleted (as it’s just a copy).
Link to Flickr set-up post
A word on Searching on Metadata
For me, over the years I have amassed 100G’s of photos and videos and being able to more easily find files is important to me. Moving away from iPhoto, I wanted an easy way to do this and by having a script that allows me to easily add tags/keywords is very beneficial since I can then search on these terms in OSX and Flickr. You can be as anal or lazy as you want when it comes to tagging but the ability to do it is there.
Bonus: Auto-importing Photos and Video from your iPhone
There are lots of ways to get files from your phone to Dropbox but I am using an app called PhotoSync which is perfect for my process. It is installed on all three iPhones in the family and enables automatic uploading in the background to Dropbox (based on geolocation). In this way, I never have to remind people to sync their content. It just happens. It also has a variety of options including setting the specific Dropbox folder into which the files are uploaded as well as allowing you to import shared photo streams if you use them. This was the killer feature (and auto uploading in background) as being able to upload each person’s files into their respective folders is key to my workflow. I am sure there are similar apps for Android.
So there you go. Hopefully for anyone thinking of doing the same thing or who is already using Dropbox (or something similar), my process is helpful for you in automating your workflow.