iPhoto Library Manager and iPhoto ‘08

Posted on August 9, 2007 by Brian Webster
Filed Under Updates, iPhoto Library Manager | 21 Comments

Apple announced the release of a new version of iLife today, which includes an updated version of iPhoto. I don’t have any super-secret contacts inside Apple (yet!) that feed me advanced copies of iPhoto, so I don’t yet know what the compatibility status of iPhoto Library Manager is with the new iPhoto. In the past, the basic function of creating and switching between libraries in iPhoto Library Manager has been unaffected by updates, but the more advanced features such as copying photos and merging libraries has required an update, and I’m guessing that will probably be the case once again.

So, I’ll be getting my hands on a copy of iPhoto ‘08 as soon as I can, and I’ll have more information on what works and what doesn’t once I get a chance to play around with it some. For now, proceed with caution if you’re upgrading to the new iPhoto and use iPhoto Library Manager heavily, and I’ll be posting whatever info I find as soon as I find it.

Update: 8/9/07 The FedEx guy arrived today with my new copy of iLife ‘08! As I suspected, it appears you can still create and switch between libraries using iPhoto Library Manager with no problems. Also as I suspected, the following features of iPLM don’t work with iPhoto 7:

If you try to use any of these features, you’ll probably get a lovely looking error message along the lines of “*** -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil key”. Nothing bad will happen if you try to copy stuff between libraries, it just won’t work. So, I’ll be working on getting these features back up and running, I’ll have more of an idea of a timeframe once I get more of a chance to delve into the details.

You’ll probably also notice that the album list might look a little odd after you work with iPhoto 7 a little bit, as there are some new album types that are displayed in iPLM with a regular album icon. Also, the roll list will not display roll names properly. This is all due to the new “Events” feature in iPhoto 7, which is basically a rebranding of rolls that actually makes them a useful and integral part of the iPhoto experience (you can read more about events/rolls and some other iPhoto 7 changes here).

Also, anyone who encounters specific issues with iPhoto ‘08, please e-mail support@fatcatsoftware.com with your issue, as that will be the best way for me to keep track of them and give a response.

iPhoto Library Manager 3.2.6 released

Posted on July 20, 2007 by Brian Webster
Filed Under News, Updates, iPhoto Library Manager | 1 Comment

I released a minor update to iPhoto Library Manager today, bringing it to version 3.2.6. It’s a free update from previous versions, and is mostly a bug fix release. The only new feature of note is that you can now click the header of the album/roll list to sort the albums/rolls by name. This is particularly handy with rolls when you are looking for a specific one, in which case the default sort order (the order in which they were imported) isn’t usually too helpful.

In case anyone was wondering, I have not actually been working on this minor update for the entire 4 months since the last one. I’m inefficient sometimes, but not that inefficient! I’ve been spending most of my time lately working on a brand new project. Details will be forthcoming soon, but for now let’s just say that it involves something rhyming with “iSwoons”…

How to copy your keyword list from one iPhoto library to another

Posted on April 26, 2007 by Brian Webster
Filed Under Tips & Tricks, iPhoto Library Manager | Leave a Comment

One of the key features of iPhoto Library Manager is that it will copy a photo’s list of keywords when copying the photo from one library to another. However, this only helps for keywords that are actually assigned to one or more of your photos. What if you have a large list of keywords, but some of them aren’t actually assigned to any photos in your library? How can you take that keyword list and duplicate it in another library? Here’s one technique that utilizes this feature of iPhoto Library Manager:

  1. Open the library whose keyword list you want to copy and choose a photo in the library. We’ll call this our ‘dummy’ photo. You can even duplicate an existing photo to use as a temporary ‘dummy’ if you don’t want to be modifying any of the existing photos.
  2. Assign every keyword in the library to the dummy photo (or at least every keyword you want to bring over to the other library). Note that doing this through the keyword pane in the lower left is a big pain in the butt, since you have to draaaaag the photo on to each keyword over and over again. Try using the info window (command-i) which has simple checkboxes, much better for quickly assigning multiple keywords to a photo.
  3. Copy that photo over to the library you want to copy the keyword list to. iPhoto Library Manager will copy the photo over, then assign all the keywords in the list to the copied photo, effectively recreating the whole keyword list in the destination library.
    Copying a keyword list
  4. Now that the photo’s been copied and the keywords recreated, you can delete the dummy photo from the destination library. You can also return to the original library and remove all the keywords from the dummy photo, or just delete it if you made a temporary photo for this purpose.

Another similar technique, if you create new libraries fairly often and like to have a standard list of keywords in your libraries, is to create an empty library and use this technique to populate its keyword list, then just keep it around. Whenever you need a new library, instead of creating a blank one, just use the “Duplicate Library” command to duplicate this library, along with the whole keyword list. Now all your new libraries will start out with the same custom keyword list.

iPhoto Library Manager 3.2.5 released

Posted on March 22, 2007 by Brian Webster
Filed Under Updates, iPhoto Library Manager | 7 Comments

Version 3.2.5 of iPhoto Library Manager was released today. The biggest change was the addition of a new option to help with keeping track of duplicates when copying albums or merging libraries.

There has been an option for a while to skip importing duplicate photos, so you don’t end up with multiple copies of the same photo. The downside to this was that if you copied an album over to another library, but some of those photos were already in that library, then only the photos that were newly imported (i.e. the non-duplicates) would get added to the album after the copy was complete.

In 3.2.5, there is a new setting in the preferences window that will tell iPLM to add the existing copy of any duplicate photo to albums that get copied over. So now, whenever you copy an album, all the photos from the original album will be added to the copied album, regardless of whether they were duplicates that already existed in the new library or non-duplicates that were just imported while doing the copy.

To see the full list of changes, check out the release notes. You can download the update here.

Setting a default iPhoto library for importing from a camera

Posted on March 16, 2007 by Brian Webster
Filed Under Tips & Tricks, iPhoto Library Manager | 3 Comments

This is a question that has come up several times from various customers. You may frequently switch back and forth between multiple iPhoto libraries, but whenever you import photos from your camera, you want them to only go into a particular library. However, when you plug in the camera, iPhoto opens up with whatever library you happened to be using last, so you have to quit iPhoto, go back and switch to the right library, then open up iPhoto again, which gets to be a pain in the butt after you’ve done it half a dozen times. So how you do get around this?

Image Capture

Lurking away in the Applications folder, often overlooked and unloved, is a little application called Image Capture. This is a general-purpose app for importing image data from various sources, such as cameras, scanners, or devices shared over the network. In the preferences window for Image Capture, there is a setting that allows you to choose what application to open up when you connect your camera.
Image Capture prefs

Typically, this is set to iPhoto, and this is why iPhoto automatically pops up when you connect your camera. But we’re going to put something else there instead…

Applescript and iPhoto Library Manager

iPhoto Library Manager supports Applescript, so you can actually write a script that will open your preferred library for you automatically. We’re going to write such a script, save it as an application, and then tell Image Capture to open the script instead of iPhoto. (note: this script requires iPLM 3.1.1 or later to work correctly)

First, open up Script Editor (located in the Applescript folder inside the main Applications folder) and copy the following script into the editor window:

tell application “iPhoto Library Manager”
open library “Default Library”
end tell

This simple script tells iPhoto Library Manager to open the library named “Default Library” from your library list. iPLM will take care of all the logic of quitting and opening iPhoto as necessary, but of course you’ll want to type in the name of whatever library it is you want to import your camera photos into. You can test the script by clicking the “Run” button, at which point iPhoto should open up, displaying the library you specified.

Now we need to save this script and tell Image Capture to use it. Press command-S to save the script, making sure to save the script as an application from the File Format pop-up menu (see the screenshot below).
Saving the Applescript

You can save it any place you want, as long as you remember where you put it. Your Documents folder might be a good place if you don’t have any better location for it.

Hooking it up

The final step is to go back to Image Capture, open the preferences window, and select “Other…” from the pop-up menu that lets you select the application to open when attaching a camera. Navigate to where you just saved the script, select it, and click “Open”.

Now, you should be all set to go. Connect your camera, and iPhoto should pop open with the library you specified. iPhoto will probably bug you, asking if you want to open iPhoto when you connect your camera, to which you can reply “No”. If you don’t want iPhoto Library Manager to stay open after it’s opened the library, just add another line reading “quit” (without the quotes) before the “end tell” line in the script.

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