Creating an easy-to-import photo archive for iPhoto?

January 16, 2008 7:53 AM

How can I make it really easy for someone to import my photos into iPhoto?

I take a lot of photos (especially at family events), and inevitably, my father requests that I put the photos someplace that he can get to them. By "get to them", he really means "get them into iPhoto so I can print them on my photo printer". Unfortunately, my usual M.O. would be to post them to be viewed on the web, which doesn't give him a good way to accomplish this. This is compounded by the fact that my dad is decidedly not a computer person.

What I'm looking to find is the easiest way to get photos from me (on a Windows machine) to my father (on an OS X machine). The ideal scenario would be a one-click solution (e.g. "download a file, double click, it extracts the files and sends them to iPhoto"). I have web hosting available to get the files to him, but I'm really looking for how to get them into iPhoto afterwards.

I'm quite familiar with shell scripting (sh/bash/perl/etc) on a Unix/Linux, but I have no idea about OS X internals; is there any reason I can't make a self-extracting archive via sh on OS X just like any other Unix-alike? Presuming that is kosher, is it possible to programmatically insert photos into iPhoto? How?

Other suggestions for solving this problem are welcome as well, this is just the first route that seems feasible.

posted by tocts to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Give him a zip file of a folder. Tell him to drop the folder on the iPhoto window. All the photos in it will be imported.
posted by edd at 7:55 AM on January 16, 2008

Do you live near each other? If so, I'd be inclined to buy a 2-4GB SD card and a card reader that you can pass back and forth. Put the photos on it. When he plugs it into his Mac USB port (and you can check this the first time) if his machien is set up like mine it shoudl open iphoto and give him cues to import the photos.
posted by jessamyn at 8:21 AM on January 16, 2008

iPhoto 6 and above have a feature called photocasting, which is basically RSS photo feeds. It would require a bit more work on your part to generate the RSS, and you would have to make the files available on the web, but it would be dead simple on his end. He just picks File > Subscribe to Photo Feed and enters a URL, and then it auto-updates. No-click solution!

Of course, Apple doesn't even mention this feature on the current iPhoto page, or I would link to that. And they don't document the format, so you need this: unofficial iPhoto RSS format documentation. The apple-wallpapers:image is the important tag.
posted by smackfu at 8:39 AM on January 16, 2008

edd has it. There's no reason to make this any more complicated than that.
posted by dmd at 8:40 AM on January 16, 2008

(And lots of good reasons not to.)
posted by dmd at 8:40 AM on January 16, 2008

The current version of iPhoto can subscribe to an RSS stream of photos. I just tried subscribing to a stream on flickr, and I can print the photos, add them to albums, assign ratings (but not rename or tag them). It's a little slow, but it works fine.

So, if he's using an older version of iPhoto, get him to upgrade (current version is 7, aka "iPhoto '08"). If he's using the current version, tell him "in iPhoto, pull down the File menu to 'subscribe to photo feed...' and put this URL in the field that pops up" -- you'll need to supply him with the appropriate RSS or Atom URL.
posted by adamrice at 8:41 AM on January 16, 2008

Oh, and you know what? I can drag a photo from a stream to my Library and then it becomes resident on my hard drive, so I can rename and tag it.
posted by adamrice at 8:42 AM on January 16, 2008

Yeah, this is what the RSS photocasting feature of iPhoto is for.
posted by daser at 10:10 AM on January 16, 2008