Looking for a simple freeware image organizer for Mac
April 30, 2010 1:29 AM   Subscribe

I use a Mac. I'm looking for a simple freeware app that will scan a directory of images and sort them by resolution into directories named after their resolution size. Bulk preview, delete, etc is a plus but not necessary.

The images are wallpapers are collected over the years. So, most features required to organize photos really aren't needed.

Thank you.
posted by bandersnatch to Computers & Internet (10 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Would it be possible to use Actionscript to do this?
posted by Spurious at 1:39 AM on April 30, 2010


Response by poster: Hey Spurious,

I'm not familiar with Actionscript. Not much of a coder.

However, if you mean, am I fine with running something else than native Cocoa (ex. Adobe Air). Yup, as long as it works and doesn't crash.
posted by bandersnatch at 2:13 AM on April 30, 2010


You might be able to use Automator to do this. I haven't got it in front of me to play around with, but it's pretty powerful and relatively straightforward to use. You just select different actions from the menu and put them in order. I think it's in your Applications/Utilities folder.
posted by Magnakai at 2:27 AM on April 30, 2010


Im not at my Mac now, but have you tried using the search in the Finder? - it might have a resolution criteria you can filter by. There aren't that many wallpaper resolutions so you could just filter and move to a folder manually.
posted by wongcorgi at 2:43 AM on April 30, 2010


Do Macs have ImageMagick installed by default? Do Macs use bash as the default shell? If so open a terminal and navigate to your directory of pictures and do:
$ ls
1271968979712.jpg  1271971582483.jpg  1272067189132.jpg  1272163812963.jpg
1271969009544.jpg  1272038517971.jpg  1272162890827.jpg  1272164188514.jpg
1271969155567.jpg  1272040460449.jpg  1272163681443.jpg

$ for file in *.jpg     # you won't have to type the '>', it'll be there as if by magic.
> do
> identify "$file" | (
> read name type size tail
> [[ ! -d $size ]] && mkdir $size
> mv "$file" $size
> )
> done

$ ls
1280x800  1600x1200  1920x1080  2560x1600  3648x2048

$ ls 3648x2048
1272162890827.jpg  1272163681443.jpg  1272163812963.jpg  1272164188514.jpg

Done. 'identify' is part of the ImageMagick package. Replace '*.jpg' with '*.gif' or '*.png' or whatever '*.{jpg,jpeg,png,gif}'.
posted by zengargoyle at 4:11 AM on April 30, 2010


Wongcorgi has it right:

1. Go to the Finder, click on File > New Smart Folder.
2. In this Smart Folder, click on the plus button on the right side of the window (this will be located next to the "Save" button).
3. Change the Kind menu option to Other
4. From the pull-down menu that appears, select either "Resolution height" or "Resolution width"
5. To the left of the equals menu, type in the desired resolution (640, 800, 1400, 1024, 1280, etc. depending on height or width)
6. Change equals to another relation type (less than, greater than, etc.) if desired

Repeat 1-6 for other resolutions. You'll have a Smart Folder for each resolution value.

As an added bonus, this Smart Folder will update itself automatically as new images are added to your computer — that's why OS X calls them "Smart" folders. So you will only need to set up the Smart Folder once.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:12 AM on April 30, 2010 [2 favorites]


Oh, make a backup copy of your directory first just in case...
posted by zengargoyle at 4:12 AM on April 30, 2010


Do Macs have ImageMagick installed by default

It is available through MacPorts but the Smart Folder option will be much easier for a non-programmer.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:14 AM on April 30, 2010


I threw together a quick bit of (ugly) applescript and python to make a droplet that should do what you're asking. If you drop a directory full of images on the application, it will move each image to a subdirectory whose name is based on the dimensions of the image (e.g. 480x640).

The droplet

(For those poking at this on the command line: While ImageMagic isn't installed on OS X by default, sips (scriptable image processing system) is.)
posted by JiBB at 4:27 AM on April 30, 2010 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thanks, guys.

I will try the droplet and the smart folders.

Worse comes to worse, I'll run Windows under VM and use some utilities I know are available for that OS.
posted by bandersnatch at 10:39 PM on April 30, 2010


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