Noodlesoft Forums

Hi,

So we all have mobile and cameras and many other inputs for photos. I like using google photos, and I like using lightroom. I also would like to have them all in one location so that it's just easier to view (ie holiday photos taken with both camera and mobile)

My setup:
Phone > Google Photos
Cameras > Straight to desktop and lightroom

What I'm trying to do:
1 - I've already enabled the option to view google photos in google drive, so that allows me to get the files onto the desktop
2 - I can create a hazel rule to just copy over the file to a temporary holding folder (I don't want to move the file, as it will then delete off of the main google photos app)

-- up to here is fine, unless better ideas! --
1 - I want to automatically sort (move) the copied over google photos to another folder of all my photos, by year and then month (through EXIF data I'm assuming). The problem is, if I move the file, it will get deleted off of google photos.
2 - I could either have aliases living in the temp folder so that the script doesn't keep copying files I've already copied and moved...but not sure how to do this
OR
is there a way to run a scrip that already knows what has been copied over so that there is no attempt to recopy something that has been sorted into the correct folder?

Fundamentally
1 - I want to keep google photos as is
2 - Have a folder on my desktop where I combine the google photos with my camera shots, where I can view them combined in lightroom

I hope this makes sense...I just can't find a better solution...This is my workflow as a diagram if that helps:
https://snag.gy/vyF63D.jpg

You can use the "Make alias" action to create aliases instead of copying but if you want to stick with copying, then you can try using the "Sync" action to do so. Check out this thread on more details on that: http://www.noodlesoft.com/forums/viewto ... 1593#p6500

Hi

Thanks for the swift response! I would rather copy the files over, but the sync was my lame idea to trick the rule from copying over new files. Once a file is copied over, I would want to move to another folder. Then as the first destination folder is empty, I didn't want the script to keep copying old files and attempting to move over again.

Does that make sense?

It's sort of:
Photos > drive (just on drive stream so not a local copy) > copy to external > organise in another folder (removing from the previous folder)

Important to note, I don't want to delete the original drive file.

The sync action would prevent old stuff from being copied over unnecessarily. But if you want to do it via move/copy, then you can create rules to do that. I'm not clear on the need for a temporary folder in this case if you are going to end up moving it out of there anyways. You can have a rule copy the file to another folder, then sort into subfolder from there, thereby moving it to its final destination.

Oh! That sounds perfect. So the sync would know if copied before even if the ultimate destination is not where it originally copied to? I don't want to sync back to A...it's just one way A>B, so I don't want to sync the folders as B will have more photos and files before the age of google photos.

This is what I'm trying to do, which hopefully simplifies my writing. Just having a hard time thinking around the script and how to get it done.



Sorry to be so stiff...

Thanks so much for the help!

Oh, for sync to work the files at the destination need to mirror the source so that won't work for this case. Instead, then, use the Copy action then sort into subfolders. You can use a condition like ""Date added is after date last matched" to only match when the file is newly added.

Ok....man, I'm really clueless with this stuff. What does that actually do or mean as a rule? Does hazel remember files that were copied over already in some log? and does it match against that to see if it has changed/copied? Or will it look at the folder the file was copied over to, and compare to see it updating, copying is necessary?

Sorry.

How Hazel behaves depends on the conditions you set. In general, if the same rule keeps matching the same file, the actions won't be executed. You can even make it a bit more consistent by using "Date added is after date last matched" to only have it fire the first time the file appears.

You can set conditions to monitor based on different changes. You can't really, though, compare against the file at the destination since in your case, the file isn't there.