This is a refinement of my workflows for ingesting files from an iPhone or iPad camera, to move them onto my photo archive drive, and allows the removal of Image Capture from the process, which is good because the macOS USB driver can be flaky, and I’ve had at least one system crash from physically plugging in my iPhone.
So, first things first; the relevant file structure. This involves two parts of the filesystem:
- I have directories in my home directory (indicated by ~), and then
- I have an external drive (actually an NVME SSD on a PCI card) were my photography is kept.
The directories are:
- ~/Downloads
- ~/Pictures
- ~/Movies
- /Photo_Drive/Cameras/MyiOSDeviceModel
In effect, what this workflow does, is move all Airdropped movies and images to their respective type folders in my home directory, and then, if they’re the original images taken on the devices, shifts them over to the root folder for the respective device on the photo drive, and once they arrive there, they’re processed into a Y/M/D folder hierarchy.
This allows is for things airdropped to jump off the processing train in the appropriate places if they’re not images taken with the cameras on the devices.
So, the way this works is, when you Airdrop images or movies from the iOS device to the Mac, they are automatically deposited:
In ~/Downloads, a Hazel workflow attached to that directory then does the following actions:
- If the Date Added is in the last 1 minute, and
- the kind is Image:
- Move to folder: ~/Pictures
- If the Date Added is in the last 1 minute, and
- the kind is Movie:
- Move to folder: ~/Movies
In ~/Pictures, a Hazel workflow does the following actions:
- If the Date Added is in the last 1 minute, and
- the Device Model is MyiOSDeviceModel (as revealed by the EXIF metadata in one of its files), and
- the Kind is HEIF Image:
- Move to folder /Photo_Drive/Cameras/MyiOSDeviceModel
In ~/Movies, a Hazel workflow does the following actions:
- If the Date Added is in the last 1 minute, and
- the Where From is MyiOSDeviceName (as revealed by the EXIF metadata in one of its files), and
- the Kind is Movie:
- Move to folder /Photo_Drive/Cameras/MyiOSDeviceModel
In /Photo_Drive/Cameras/MyiOSDeviceModel, a Hazel workflow does the following actions:
- If the Subfolder Depth is 0, and (this keep the action occurring in only the root folder)
- Date Added is in the last 1 minute:
- Sort into subfolder (based on the dates in the image’s EXIF):
- (YYYY)
- (MM)
- (DD)
- (MM)
- (YYYY)
- Sort into subfolder (based on the dates in the image’s EXIF):
This final workflow is also used for each camera directory for my non iOS device cameras, so when I directly import images to their root folders, the same Y/M/D hierarchical folder structures are created / used.