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iPhoto 4 to Spotlight
Function: Copies the title and comment of iPhoto images into the Spotlight Comments field of the corresponding image files.
Author: Nick Takayama
Requires: Selected items in iPhoto
Input: (iPhoto items)
Result: (iPhoto items) The iPhoto 4 images will have a Spotlight comments field that uses the Title and Comments from iPhoto.
Notes: The primary purpose of this action is so search queries will work on iPhoto 4 images, which aren’t otherwise recognized by Spotlight. It works on iPhoto 5 images as well. May be very slow, especially when used on hundreds or thousands of images.
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Well, seems we’re both using the same machine then. Does it have anything to do with the file size? My images are about 2 Mb a piece.
I’ll give it a try with less big files and keep you posted.
Comment by Nick — May 5, 2005 @ 3:55 am
Hi.
For me it only takes about 5 seconds to process around 5 images. 1.5GHz powerbook. I also have around 300 images. Strange that it is so slow on your machine.
I’ll look into it later.
Comment by Nick T — May 4, 2005 @ 1:44 pm
Hey Adam.
Just did the same thing, and first I thought that Automator wasn’t working properly…
Tried it on less images then, and it takes roughly about 45 seconds per image… (I have about 3000 images… ouch).
Is this normal that it’s taking so long? If yes, then Apple wins, as I’ll probably have to get Ilife ‘05.
Comment by Nick — May 4, 2005 @ 4:47 am
Sorry about it not understanding an album selection. I’ll probably add that in soon. The slowness is because it has to ask iPhoto for everything via applescript. Not much I can do about that (I think). As for album names… well, a photo could appear in multiple albums, so I would have to ask iPhoto for all albums that each image is contained in. This would be even slower.
Ultimately the best solution would be for apple to add a spotlight plugin/support for iPhoto4.
Comment by Nick T — May 4, 2005 @ 12:44 am
hm… doesn’t seem to work for me.
forgive me as this is my first use of automator, but the steps are: -create a new workflow -”get selected iPhoto items” as first item -add this action as second item
then run the workflow? or add a third item such as import back to iphoto? what?
cause neither seems to work, With just those two actions, it runs and completes, but the spotlight comment field remains blank and it doesn’t find them when searching on a word in the current iphoto comment Get an error from iphoto if i try to add “import to iphoto”
(using iphoto 4.0.3)
Comment by axcess99 — May 4, 2005 @ 12:12 am