Silent Sifter 2 Preview – iPhoto Support

When you have a Mac, you typically use iPhoto to manage your photos, there is just no getting around it.  Our research shows that more than 80% of Mac users use iPhoto in some capacity, or have in the past.  Now it is supported by Silent Sifter.

iPhoto is a great program, but you may not want to allow it exclusively hoard your photos and videos inside the .library file that it creates.

With Silent Sifter 2.0, we wanted to give you some flexibility in using iPhoto as both an input or an output for your files.  Here are some examples of how you might use iPhoto inputs/outputs:

Cleaning out an old iPhoto Library you don’t use anymore

Maybe you used to use iPhoto, but don’t anymore.  Do you still have photos stored in your iPhoto library?  Are you sure you extracted them all out into whatever structure/program you are using now (i.e. Aperture, Lightroom, Lyn, Picasa, folders)?

You can wire iPhoto as an input to the Sifter, and have all of those files organized into your structure and renamed according to your preferences.  With duplicate prevention and collision prevention, any mess that might exist in your iPhoto collection will cleaned up in your new folder structure.

Once you are done, you can remove the iPhoto library from Silent Sifter and stop worrying about what files you might have in there that aren’t in your main collection.

Importing files from a Camera into both iPhoto and a Folder Structure/Dropbox/Google Drive/etc at the same time

Maybe you use iPhoto to create collages and share on Facebook.  But you keep all of your photos in a separate folder structure as your primary storage of your files.  You might be storing this folder structure on Dropbox or Google Drive for backup reasons.  You want iPhoto and your folder structure to stay in sync, with all your photos and/or videos in both places without you constantly adding them and curating both locations.

I admit – this is what I do.  I like the iPhoto and Apple TV screensaver, but the photos need to be in the iPhoto database or they will not show up in the Screensaver.  So that means I have to open iPhoto and add my photos there, in addition to adding them in my sifted folder structure.  It’s such a pain, that I go long stretches before I decide to take the time to do it, and even then I approach the task as if I am about to do my taxes – with great dread.

Silent Sifter 2.0 solves this problem.  Simply create another output location to iPhoto.  I also took the step to filter out videos from iPhoto – I don’t use iPhoto for my video files, so there is no reason to duplicate them there.  Once it is wired, when you import files, they will be imported to iPhoto as well, and as always duplicates will be prevented.

So how does this really work?

We are dipping our toe in the iPhoto waters, so to speak.  There are lots of things we could do, but with v2.0, we are aiming to give you the ability to use a single iPhoto library file as an input and/or output location, with duplicate prevention, filters, and renaming support.  We could have added other features, but we wanted to give you access to the iPhoto connector sooner than later, and let you give us input on what, if any, addition features we should consider.

When using iPhoto Input Locations, Silent Sifter will:

• Look for your iPhoto Library at ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library, only.
• Only allow one iPhoto Library input location at a time.
• Import Original/Master files only
• Filter files according to your preferences
• Import both Photos and Videos from the library (unless you filter them out of course)
• NOT make any changes to the input iPhoto Library
• Look for a Masters/Originals folder within your iPhoto Library for importing from.

When using iPhoto Output Locations, Silent Sifter will:

• Look for your iPhoto Library at ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library, only
• Only allow one iPhoto Library output location at a time
• Rename files according to you rename preferences
• Filter files according to your preferences
• Write files into the Auto Import directory inside your iPhoto library (this means that the next time you open iPhoto, all files in this folder will be auto-imported).
• Import both Photos and Videos from the library (unless you filter them out of course)
• NOT make any changes to any of your iPhoto library, other than to write files into the Auto Import folder
• NOT allow you to customize the folder structure for your output files (iPhoto doesn’t like that)

There are lots of other ways to use iPhoto in conjunction with Silent Sifter to get your photos and videos organized the way that you want them.  How do you use iPhoto?  Let us know in the comments!