[Gavin]

Hi,

I'm trying to write an applescript that will add comments to a photo in iPhoto. I have descriptions and associated filenames for about 200 photos and I want to drop them into the photos' comments field. The pix are already in iPhoto and sorted in to albums, etc.

All the examples I can find for iPhoto deal with an image that is already selected but I need to go the other way. I want to find and select an image based on filename or title.

Can this be done? I can't seem to stumble onto the right syntax. Apple's
iPhoto scripting page specifically mentions 'searching' for a photo.


I've tried variations on this, no go :

set this_comment to 'some comment'
tell application "iPhoto"
activate

set this_photo to select (photo whose title is "DCP_6392.JPG") -- this is what it chokes on

tell this_photo
set the comment to this_comment
end tell
end tell

I've even tried having two more beers and it still isn't working.

I could probably do a shell script that drops the comments into the IPTC tags. then use the example script to move the IPTC tag data into the iPhoto comments. But that's more of a hassle.

thanks

[Diggory Laycock]

AppleScript is a bit more layered than that - The photos belong not to the application object, but to albums of the application object:

[php]
tell application "iPhoto"
set allAlbums to every album


repeat with i from 1 to number of items in allAlbums
set thisAlbum to item i of allAlbums
tell thisAlbum
-- get properties
set photosList to (every photo whose name is "IMG_0185.JPG")

try
tell first item of photosList
set comment to "Rah, Rah, Rasputin: lover of the Russian Queen."
end tell
end try

end tell
end repeat

end tell
[/php]

[Diggory Laycock]

oh, by the way - the code above will add the comment to *any* file with the given name - so if you have several photos with the same filename (as i did - different people's cameras) they will all have the new comment applied.

[Gavin]

Thanks, that does the trick!

I AM going to run into the 'same name' issue. This is for a friend and his camera's filename odometer has wrapped already. Most of the descriptions are for the early pix so I'll drop it out of the loop when it finds a match.