iPhoto Diet
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Author: Martin Fuhrer
Contributors: Fabien Octave, Didier Guillion



A freeware Applescript Studio application for use with Apple's iPhoto.

Minimum Requirements

• Mac OS X 10.2.x
• iPhoto 1 or 2

What is iPhoto Diet?

Apple's iPhoto automatically backs up original copies of your photos whenever you make changes, such as rotating an image, adjusting brightness, or cropping. This makes it possible to revert back to the original if you are unhappy with your changes. The originals, along with the modified photos, are kept in the iPhoto library and over time add greatly to the library's size. There may be times when you do not want to keep some or all of the originals. iPhoto Diet is an application that scans through an iPhoto library folder and moves any undesired originals to the Trash. iPhoto Diet can be run manually or set to run automatically at desired times.

Why would I want trash my originals?

Several reasons for eliminating originals are:

1. If you have set up iPhoto to view/edit photos in an external image program, each time you double-click an image from iPhoto the original is backed up. This occurs even if you do not actually modify the photo. In this case, you end up with a library full of unnecessary duplicates.
2. Whenever you rotate an image, iPhoto backs up the original unrotated image. You may not find it necessary to keep the unrotated images.
3. Prior to backing up your iPhoto library to CD or DVD, you may wish to strip the photos' thumbnail icons to recover space for some extra photos.
4. You are low on hard disk space.
5. You are completely happy with your modified photos and you see no reason to revert back to originals.

Installation

Drag the iPhoto Diet application to any desired location on your hard drive.

Quick Start

To get started right away:

1. Launch iPhoto Diet.
2. Add libraries to the iPhoto Libraries list.
3. Select the library or libraries you wish to use.
4. Select your dieting options.
5. Click "Start Diet".

Precautions

For maximum safety of your photos, you may wish to back up your iPhoto library folders prior to running iPhoto Diet. After you successfully slim down your iPhoto libraries and check that they properly work with iPhoto, you can remove the back-ups.

Launching iPhoto Diet

Double-click the iPhoto Diet icon to get started. Alternatively, you can drag iPhoto library folders directly onto the icon, and iPhoto Diet will immediately begin removing originals in the libraries using existing options. (This is similar to the behaviour of iPhoto Diet 1.x.x)

Adding, Selecting, and Removing Libraries

Add libraries to the iPhoto Library list by clicking the "Add Library" button (or type Cmd-A) and selecting them from the Open dialog box. You can also drag iPhoto library folders from the Finder onto the iPhoto Library list.

Once added, you can change the name of a library by double clicking it. Note that changing the name in the list view will not change the name of the library in the Finder. Selecting a library will reveal its path in the status bar at the bottom of the window.

To remove a library, select it in the list and click the "Remove Library" button (or type Cmd-R). This will remove the library from the iPhoto Library list only; the library will remain untouched in the Finder.

You can select multiple libraries by clicking together with the Shift or Command keys.

Dieting Options

Use the Dieting Options panel to select the criteria for removing photos from the iPhoto libraries.

• Remove All Originals: Move ALL backed-up originals to the Trash. In iPhoto, you will be unable to revert to any original photos, so you may want to think twice before selecting this option. This option is most effective for reducing the size of your iPhoto libraries.
• Remove Selectively: Move originals to the Trash according to the following three criteria:
  
  • Redundant Duplicates: Removes all unnecessary duplicates. The original photo is exactly the same as the modified photo. Select this option if you have set up iPhoto to view photos in an external image program.
  • Unrotated Originals: Removes the unrotated originals of pictures which you have rotated by 90 degrees. If your photos are in jpeg format, the unrotated original will usually have superior quality to the rotated image, which must be resaved using iPhoto's jpeg compression. In practice, though, the difference in quality may be barely visible, if at all. Select this option if you frequently take vertical shots.
  • Orphans: Removes any lurking photos or files that are no longer recognized by iPhoto.
    
• Strip Icon Thumbnails: This option does not remove any photos, but rather removes the icon thumbnails that are visible on photo files in the Finder. This is accomplished by removing the resource fork, the portion of the file that stores scaled-down versions of the photo. Typically, the resource fork of a single photo file occupies 50 KB to 100 KB. Check this option if you rarely view the contents of your iPhoto library folders in the Finder. The pictures below exhibit before and after views (left and right respectively) for stripping icon thumbnails - note that previews are not affected. After stripping, thumbnails may continue to be displayed until you log out or reboot. If you ever want to regenerate your thumbnails, you can use a program such as Pixture Studio's QuickImageCM.

Diet in Progress

Select the libraries you wish to scan from the iPhoto Library list and click the "Start Diet" button (or type Cmd-S). The progress of the diet will be displayed in the window's status bar. You can abort at any time by clicking "Stop Diet" (or type Cmd-S). Any photos that have already been moved to the Trash will remain in the Trash.

Once the diet is finished, you must manually empty the Trash to permanently remove photos.

Can iPhoto Diet be set to run automatically at predefined intervals?

By clicking the "Auto Start" option, iPhoto Diet will automatically begin scanning the selected libraries using the currently selected options at the next launch. Using this feature in combination with crontabs, you can have iPhoto Diet run automatically at particular times of the day or week, such as night time when your Mac is likely to be sitting idle. In this way you can keep your iPhoto libraries slim and trim without any further intervention from yourself.

Umm... cron-what?

Cron is a UNIX scheduling facility used by Mac OS X to execute commands, such as opening applications, at predefined times. The commands can be placed in a system crontab file (in /etc/crontab) or in a user crontab file (in /var/cron/tabs/). Although crontab files can be edited by hand, a nice alternative is to use CronniX, a graphical frontend for the cron facility. If you are unfamiliar with crontabs, the help pages for CronniX give a good introductory overview.

Supposing you want iPhoto Diet to run every morning at 4:30 am, enable the "Auto Start" option and add the following entry to your crontab:

Similarly, to run iPhoto Diet every Tuesday at 10:15 pm, you would add the following entry:

In CronniX, these entries would appear as follows:

How do I turn off the Trash can sound?

The Trash can sound, played whenever a photo is moved to the Trash, is generated by the Mac OS X interface sound effects feature. In your System Preferences, open the Sound panel and click on the Sound Effects tab. Uncheck "Play user interface sound effects."

Can iPhoto Diet be safely used while iPhoto is running?

Yes. iPhoto Diet only moves the original back-ups to the Trash. It does not move any of the working copies that iPhoto may be accessing.

Is iPhoto Diet available in my language?

Thanks to the effort of individuals who have donated their time and translation skills, iPhoto Diet includes localization files in several languages. If iPhoto Diet does not open with your language, most likely no translation has been made. Anyone is welcome to add a new language localization or update an existing localization. Please contact me if interested.

What if I encounter problems?

If iPhoto Diet presents any problems, such as crashes or AppleScript error messages, please let me know. The following pieces of information will help me to track bugs:

• the version number of Mac OS X and iPhoto Diet
• the wording of the error messages
• iphotodietdebug.log: Enable the File -> Log Mode menu item
• Console messages: Open the Console application in your Utilities folder and copy and paste the last few pages of text.
• Mac OS X crash log report (if crash logging is turned on in the Console application)

You can also reset iPhoto Diet's preferences to their default state by selecting File -> Reset Preferences. This will reset the Dieting Options and iPhoto Library list.

If you have any comments or suggestions for improvements, I'd be happy to hear them.

Known Issues

The following list indicates several problems I am aware of :

• When Unrotated Originals is checked, iPhoto Diet sometimes stalls for a couple of minutes during scanning. iPhoto Diet relies on the Mac OS X Image Capture Scripting addition to determine the dimensions of photos. On slower Macs, Image Capture Scripting may stall for one to two minutes if it receives too many requests at once. After the stall, scanning will continue normally. Each time a stall occurs, iPhoto Diet reduces its scanning speed so that stalls will become less frequent.
• iPhoto Diet may sometimes produce errors if the filenames of photos contain foreign characters such as 'ñ' or 'è'. This is likely an issue with the current version of Applescript.

Is source code available?

Yes. Source code in the form of an Applescript Studio project is available here.

Can I make a donation?

iPhoto Diet is free software. You are under no obligation to pay for it. It is my way of saying "thank you" to the many active free software and open source projects available for the Mac. That said, I will gladly accept donations if you are feeling very generous.

Disclaimer

I wrote iPhoto Diet as a utility for personal use, but found it useful enough to release to the iPhoto community. To my knowledge, iPhoto Diet functions as it has been described above. There may, however, be unforeseen errors that result in unintended data loss or damage. iPhoto Diet has only been tested on my personal PowerMac G3 350, and there is no guarantee that it will properly function everywhere. Use iPhoto Diet solely at your own risk. For maximum safety always back up your iPhoto library before using it with iPhoto Diet.

Version History

2.1.3 (November 11, 2003)

• Fixed several Panther related bugs eg. no more "Some data was the wrong type" errors.
• iPhoto Diet now quits automatically if Auto Mode was active at launch.
• Minor interface tweaks made to the progress bar.
• Translated documentation is now included with the download.

2.1.2 (November 2, 2003)

• Small corrections and additions to help system (thanks to Didier Guillion).
• Bundled Italian localization (Rosario Pignatelli) with the application and added French localization (Didier Guillion).
• Log Mode no longer sends current log file to the Trash.
• Fixed initial position of window (thanks to Didier Guillion).
• Successfully tested with OS X 10.3 Panther (thanks to Didier Guillion).

2.1.1 (August 10, 2003)

• Added internationalization support.
• Minor optimizations to scanning of libraries.
• Closing the window now quits iPhoto Diet.

• Added an Auto Start option to begin diet automatically when iPhoto Diet is launched. Allows diets to take place periodically when used in conjuction with crontabs.
• Window can now be resized.
• Old debug logs lurking in the iPhoto libraries are moved to the Trash.
• Minor improvements to interface and code.

• Default iPhoto Library is automatically added to the libraries list on first run.
• iPhoto Diet adaptively adjusts its scanning speed to eliminate some Image Capture Scripting errors.
• Added "Reset Preferences" menu item to reset diet options, library list, and hidden preferences.
• Thumbnails are now removed for originals as well as for modified photos.
• Size of photos and thumbnails removed is now displayed in MB if size exceeds 10000 KB.

• Pathnames containing an apostrophe are now properly handled by the shell script commands.
• Debug log file is properly closed when the "Stop Diet" button is clicked.
• Fixed a bug where iPhoto Diet would erroneously report that a shell command is missing.
• Fixed erroneous alerts displayed when a library already in the list would be added again.
• Updated some of the help messages.
• Changed alphanumeric sorting of libraries in list view from case sensitive to case insensitive.

• Added compatibility for iPhoto 2 libraries.
• iPhoto Diet is now an Applescript Studio application (It was previously an Applescript droplet.)
• Added an iPhoto Library list view that stores library paths.
• Multiple iPhoto libraries can be scanned at once.
• Progress of library scans is displayed.
• Added "Strip Icon Thumbnails" option for removing the resource fork of photo files.
• Added help messages within the application.

• Changed Debug mode to Log mode, so it doesn't sound as sinister to non-programmers :-)
• Applescript version checking ensures that minimum requirements are met.
• Scanning empty folders no longer results in an error.
• Stray files located anywhere in the library are moved to the trash if "Remove orphans" is turned on.

• Fixed a crash bug related to hidden files (.*) that may exist in subfolders of the iPhoto Library folder.
• Fixed a bug producing the error message "Can't make <pathname> into an item" on some systems.
• Added Debug mode which produces the file iphotodietdebug.log for debugging purposes.
• All images rotated by 90 degrees are now correctly identified.
• Added a current settings panel to view the selected preferences.

• Removed the requirement for Tanaka's System OSAX. Thanks Fabien Octave!
• Fixed a crash bug related to hidden files (.*) that may exist in the iPhoto Library root folder.

• Initial release.