pics project

archiving a .jpg album with legacy iPhoto

These scripts allow me to reach out into my older iMac archive and pull a collection of small (thumb), medium and high resolution images from an iPhoto folder. I can then burn a cd or dvd (or a drive) and send the photos off to the destination.

All of this flexibility is due to the [older] use of XML to contain the archive details at the location:

lg -> Pictures -> iPhoto Library -> AlbumData.xml

file instructions.txt is an overview for the sequence to run scripts. Practice with a small collection of 3-4 pictures in 2-3 iPhoto albums using a copy of the original scripts be accustomed to the changes to make in the scripts.

When hearing on the radio a while ago that iMacs would no longer install iPhoto, I became very happy that I had put the included perl scripting to use on my older equipment.

As was my circumstance, I have an archive of 8,000 photos, scanned from silver-halide negative and slide.

sequence (pasted from instructions.txt)

Each picture is saved on an external usb disk in three resolutions, in subdirectories with example files named: s_filename.jpg, m_filename.jpg, and filename.jpg. (thumb, medium, and large)

iPhoto

Drag and drop desired pictures into iPhoto albums. Album names become .txt files later, so no spaces or special characters.

xmlgrab.plx:

correct album names in the script to those needed for .txt list.
One .txt for each album.

1_fav_pic.plx:

reads fav_pic.txt and writes fav_pic.command
s/s(.+)\.jpg/$1/;
mv $_ favorites/$_

end_push.plx:

only s named small files should be in iPhoto

XML file: /Users/lg/Pictures/iPhoto Libary/AlbumData.xml
$bigdir:    /Volumes/LaCe Disk/Desktop Folder/pics/big
$capacity
$title              (two lines - title and heading)
$team: specify diskname
$multiple
$myAlbum:   iPhoto Album name inside XML

read a file from @piclist
lookup size of file in big dir
add size
check if done with disk
read another file

output:

>$pic_home/$team\_$disknum/piclist.txt

each record:

$picname
    $picsize
    $disksize

$picname could be either .png or .jpg

htmlmake.plx:

place this .plx file into subdirectory of team disk
example of input picture name:  w28fa10.jpg

set:
$full_top_path
$top_dir
$teamdir
$big_dir
$small_dir
$thumb_dir

piclist.txt is in subdirectory of team disk:

output is
BATCHIN     move1st.command
BATCHOUT    moveback.command
OUT         start.html