Ok, so, I'm about 5 years behind the curve, even though I'm a supposed professional Web 2.0 developer, but I'm just now getting into Flickr. Also, I really like taking screenshots of interesting things using CMD+SHIFT+4 and uploading those to a "Screenshots" Flickr photoset. Here's what I wanted to do to to feed my Screenshots Flickr set: Take a screenshot and have it automatically imported into iPhoto, and then upload it from iPhoto to Flickr. Will it "Just Work?" No, it does not. See my rant here.
Save Screenshots in a Special Folder
Download Deeper. Deeper is a Mac app that let's you tweak many hidden settings for your Mac. The only one I use is customizing the name of screenshot images and the location to which they are saved. I save my screenshots in [me]/Pictures/screens/ and each one is prefixed screen.
Automatically Import into iPhoto
iPhoto cannot "watch" a folder and automatically import images dropped into it. Instead, and disappointingly, you must become a pseudo-programmer and create an Automator workflow to perform this action for you. Automator is a program that lets you create workflows to, well, automate repetitive tasks, such as importing images into iPhoto. Here's what you do:
- Download Deeper, mentioned above, and configure it to save your screenshots to a Folder. I chose
Pictures/Screens
- Open iPhoto and create an album to hold your screenshots. I called it Screens, too.
- fire up Automator, which lives in
Application/Automatorand create a new Custom workflow. - Add "Get Specified Finder Items" to the list and use the
Add...button to add the folder where your screenshots will land when created
- Add "Import Files into iPhoto" and choose
Existing albumandScreens - Save it as a Folder Action:
File - Save As Plug-in...and give it a name.
- Choose
Plug-in for: Folder ActionsandAttached to Folder: screensor wherever your folder new screenshot folder resides.
Now, take a screenshot and see if iPhoto fires up and imports the image. If so, great! If not... well, maybe I messed up, maybe you did. I'm that helpful.
Comments on “Mac Attack: Automatically Importing Screenshots into iPhoto”
Jason Brummels said...
I’m not sure if this script is still working for you. I found you on the Google, but was unable to make this work with Mac OSX 10.5.5 and iPhoto 7.1.5. I did make something similar work by using ONYX (Deeper has caused system problems for me before) to specify the screen shot location, and then using the following Automator folder action: Pause 3 Sec (needed for some reason to prevent multiple images from being imported before script deletes them); Get Specified Finder Items; Get Folder Contents; Import Files Into iPhoto. Hope that helps anyone else that ends up on this post. I will be posting detailed instructions at jasonbrummels.com.
Brian said...
Unless you're really taking a lot of screenshots that is a lot of work. What I've been doing is I'll save my screenshots, then open iPhoto and under File -> Import from Library -> Then you can select your screenshot on your desktop. Pow... right into iPhoto and you can trash your desktop .png image. Buenos suerte.