I’m no doctor, so I built on what he did.
Everyone’s favorite anonymous super-engineer, Dr. Drang, took it upon himself to write some Python scripts for everyone’s favorite command line inept podcast host, Myke Hurley, to help him with his photo management. This came after he was justifiably berated by everyone’s favorite southern gentleman and Evernote/photo soup nazi, Bradley Chambers, on an episode of the greatest podcast in the world1, The Prompt.
The mission was to eliminate a problem for Myke which I share: managing photos taken with your iPhone, and getting them off the iPhone and out of the Camera Roll. Many of us, like myself, have tried iPhoto and been left wanting. Photo management is actually better on the Camera Roll, especially with iOS 7.
So, what to do?
Bradley recommends in his excellent e-book that you, in summary, make a folder structure organized by date and organize your photos that way. The two scripts Dr. Drang wrote take a flat folder of a zillion pictures (say, what Image Capture creates when dumping photos from your phone) and sorts them for you.
However, there were a few gaps2:
- There were two scripts, one to create folders for all months between 2007 and 2020, and one to actually copy the photos.
- There was no indication of progress as the files were copied. On a platter hard drive, this is… unnerving.
- Keyboard interrupts were captured and ignored.
- A list of problem files was output, which is excellent, but those files are hard to find.
I’ve fixed these gaps by:
- Combining the two scripts into one, that will automatically create folders as photos are found that need them. Thus, no extra folders are created, and only one script is necessary.
- Progress is displayed, though not in the singularly best way ever.
- Keyboard interrupts are not ignored
- The problem files are now copied to an “Unsorted” folder for easy handling after the script is run.3
The new script is up on Github, for your downloading and forking pleasure.
This claim is of dubious origin and truthiness. But I can confirm the show is very good. ↩︎
I <3 you, Doctor. Despite not being obsessed with cars. ↩︎
This is somewhat dangerous, as I’m doing it in an exception handler, but in my experience error photos are almost always those from Instagram or other third-party photo apps. ↩︎
