This AppleScript will ask the user to pick a Project and then proceed to create Albums based on the images’ import groups. These Albums will be placed into a Folder in the Project named “Import Groups”

Albums by Import Session 03.scpt

on run {input, parameters}

	set theString to ("x-launchbar:large-type?string=" & (item 1 of input)) as string
	log theString

	open location theString

	return input
end run

Just set up a service to take text from any application and have the sole action be an AppleScript. Easy!

Technorati Tags: Automator

Today I was thrown by what I could do with Automator easier and faster than straight AppleScript…

I wrote an AppleScript to export the metadata from images so that I could keep things safely offsite… the AppleScript takes literally days to run on my 34,000 image Library. The above Automator Workflow is much, much faster but doesn’t export some of the tags that my AppleScript does…

Time to connect Automator and AppleScript…

Technorati Tags: Aperture, AppleScript, Automator

Make Keywords Real
Current version: 04
Built on: Aperture 2.1 / Mac OS X 10.5.6
This AppleScript operates on the current selection.

This is an update to the previous update and should work properly now.

This AppleScript will make Aperture’s virtual keywords real.

“Huh?”

If you make hierarchal keywords in Aperture (you are, aren’t you), parent keywords are not exported with masters when exporting with XMP nor are they exported when exporting images as other formats. You can, however, use those keywords to find your images. Thus if you tag an image with ‘Bald Eagle’ in the following keyword hierarchy:

Animal
–> Wildlife
—-> Bird
——>Eagle
——–>Bald Eagle

You can find your image by searching for ‘Bird’, but when you export that same image the term ‘Bird’ is nowhere to be found.

FWIW, IMHO this is something that should have a checkbox in the Export panel.

make-hierarchal-keywords-real-04scpt1

That would be nice.

Well, now I have even more incentive to finish The Sex Lives of Cannibals and my new John Shaw book as soon as possible.

Happy New Year!

Technorati Tags: AppleScript

Hence these AppleScripts.

The first one will export the metadata for all selected file. It will save the data to a text file with a header row so that you can determine what data corresponds to what column (easy import into database or spreadsheet). It will export EXIF, IPTC and some custom metadata. You can customize the order and determine what fields are exported by editing the ‘theIPTC’ variable list.

export-metadata-to-file-06scpt1

The second script will read an export file (with header) and apply metadata to images based on their name.

restore-metadata-from-file-06scpt1

Technorati Tags: Aperture, AppleScript

When you set the limit to a certain number of songs (or size) you can choose how iTunes picks your songs. I chose ‘Randomly’. Once you do this, iTunes will keep that list of songs the same even if you rate new songs. This is not what I wanted.

The solution? Why, Google and AppleScript of course.

I Googled “itunes smart playlist randomly update” and eventually came across bbum’s blog at http://radio.weblogs.com/0100490/2002/12/09.html. He discovered that you can get iTunes to refresh the list of songs by selecting them and hitting delete. I figured that if you can do it manually then you should be able to script it.

This quick AppleScript will refresh the smart playlist named “Random Best 100″. Naturally, you can change the name to match your particular playlist.

tell application "iTunes"
	set thePL to playlist "Random Best 100"
	delete every track of thePL
end tell

Now to schedule it through iCal and I’m good to go.

Technorati Tags: AppleScript, iTunes

Hence this script.

Simply it backs up the playlists you list in the p_backupPlayLists property. I use Smart Playlists to feed the script with my iTunes Store purchases.

It will file your media in the following top level folders: Books, Music & Videos. Music is filed by name then album. Videos are organized by TV Show and PDFs are all filed together.

On run it will ask you for a destination folder and will create all of the folders it needs to do its backups. When completed it will report how many files it backed up.

Enjoy!

backup-playlists-10scpt

The basic AppleScript command mount volume is part of the Standard Additions. It accepts one main argument, the URL for the server including share point; as a string. You can also pass a username and password.

For example:

If you have integrated into a single sign on solution like Open Directory, MIT Kerberos, or Active Directory (yes, they are all really Kerberos-based) then you don’t need a username or password at all. The System will try to use the user’s Kerberos credentials and the volume will mount without any additional user interaction needed.

Mounting the server volume is easy, the more difficult part is determining what volumes to mount. Really, if you’re going to have all users mount the same volume all the time you are better off using Managed Client with Workgroup Manager (a part of Mac OS X Server). Barring that you’ll need to build some logic into the system.

Generally there is some kind of identifier attached to a user’s directory entry. Usually this is based on which groups a user is in. For example, all engineers are in the ‘engineering’ group and connect to the ‘Engineering’ share and the designers are in the “Design” group and connect to the “Graphics_Design” and “ClipArt” shares.

For my sample, I will use the above logic.

First off, lets get info about the currently logged in user. We’ll use the Unix command id. id will respond with something that looks like this:

The following AppleScript code will get that result into the variable userInfo:

AppleScript supports the if… then… else… construct. In my example no user is both and engineer and designer, but you can easily use multiple if… then… blocks to handle users that could be part of multiple groups.

To mount volumes as per my above example, the following code would be added:

It’s pretty easy to put it all together in Script Editor (in /Applications/AppleScript/) then save it as an Application. You can deploy this script to all of your systems using Remote Desktop and use Workgroup Manager to set it as a Login Item.

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac OS X, System Administration

This AppleScript allows you to select a number of Aperture Projects to export complete with master images. If a selected Project does not have all of its images online, the script will not export it and will tell you about it once it is done exporting the other Projects.

Snapshot Aperture 02.scpt.zip

PS- Yay Apple with these Aperture 2 updates! New AppleScript features with each dot-upgrade. Cool.
PPS- And the 2.1 update has much improved AppleScript support. Double kudos.

Technorati Tags: Aperture, AppleScript