Purpose

iPhoto Modified Importer is a tool to import digital photos to your iPhoto library as “modified” versions of original photos.  By default iPhoto only lets you import Originals.  This is a workaround to keep some existing linkage between Original and Modified versions on your disk, and bring that relationship into iPhoto.  It tricks iPhoto into thinking it is an external editor, then allows you to replace one photo with another from disk.

Background

Before I used a Mac, I organized and edited all my digital photos with Digikam on Linux.  My workflow looked something like this:

• Create a folder for the Album (e.g. “4th of July 2010”)
• Create a sub-folder beneath that called “Originals”
• Import all photos from the card to the Originals folder
• After editing an Original, save it to the top-level folder with the same filename.

By doing this, my release-ready photos were at the top level of every album, while Originals contained digital negatives and unedited photos for safekeeping.

Now that I am using a Mac I’d like to switch to iPhoto and get used to its workflow.  I have no problems letting iPhoto manage my library by itself, copying my photos into a consolidated location, etc.  But the first stumbling block I run into is: how can I preserve that linkage between digital originals, and the modified versions?

Most advice boils down to: “import them separately”.  But that leaves duplicates in the library, and worse it splits my workflow into “pre-iPhoto” and “post-iPhoto”, because any newly edited photos _will_ be linked.  Also, I can’t easily track which edited version goes with which original.  Since iPhoto uses its own database to keep relationships and photo info, there’s another problem: getting modified versions into iPhoto is hard.  You can’t just copy the files to the right location and expect them to be there.

Solution

Here is a solution that relies on iPhoto’s “Edit in External Editor” option.  Place the app somewhere on disk and then under iPhoto Preferences, change the Edit drop-down box to point to the app.  Now, when you double-click on a photo, it will start up iPhoto Modified Importer.

Use the Browse button to locate your target edited photo on disk, then hit OK.  The tool will “save” the image to the correct location, and exit.  iPhoto should then recognize that the file has changed and update the thumbnail, etc.

Warning

This tool is HIGHLY UNTESTED.  It doesn’t ask before saving over anything you’ve done, and it probably has potential to destroy already edited photos in your library.  BACK UP BEFORE YOU TRY TO USE IT.

Future Goals

There are a couple of additional items on the screen that I hope to one day turn into a useful feature.  Ideally you could set up a source directory first, and then iPhoto would report when a filename match is found, defaulting to that location.  This would speed up the import process.

Download

iPhoto Modified Importer 1.0 – zip file 2.6MB

This ZIP file contains the application, and the source code.  It requires XCode to build and… well, I really don’t even know what version of OS X it’s for.  10.6 at least.  Cocoa is a language designed by moon men for the sole purpose of being impossible to understand by Earthlings, but maybe it will make more sense to someone else than it does to me.