Online states and IDs

It's often useful to know if you've uploaded a picture. PictureSync can tell you this as it records each upload. What's more PictureSync doesn't use some arcane database and instead stores the state with each file using the extended attributes (xattr) system introduced with OS X 10.4. (In fact it's still the only application to make practical use of them.) This means you can use a script to easily get the upload state of any file to enhance your workflow.

See the Lightroom and Aperture pages for details specific to those applications. You may download an example script for use with Expression Media.

PictureSync goes further in order to let you synchronise. When you upload a picture to a service, the service usually assigns it a unqiue ID for their internal reference, similar to a filename (or path) on your own computer. It's useful to save these on your computer as well, as some services enable you to update or synchronise previously uploaded pictures, or get URLs for them (such as to embed in your blog and share by email). PictureSync also saves these IDs in the extended attributes.

To re-upload a previously uploaded item, you can tell PictureSync to ‘Forget Uploads’ (File menu) for selected files. Also if you never want to update previously uploaded items, you can disable this in PictureSync's preferences.

You can check the upload state for any picture in PictureSync in the list/queue, where previously uploaded pictures are shown as 'online'. You can check the state and IDs for specific accounts in the information drawer under the Services tab (globe icon), here you will also find options (if available) for copying or opening URLs for the online pictures. Data for extended attributes is also shown in the Properties tab (camera icon).

Important note about backups. Few backup programs respect extendended attributes, so if you backup using one that doesn't, when you restore PictureSync will no longer know which pictures have been uploaded, or have not. We recommended SuperDuper! The ZIP 'Archive' command in the Finder also preserves this metadata. If you're not sure what all this means, see this extensive blog post for details about different backup applications' abilities to restore metadata.

Mapping

Mapping the process by which your locally saved annotations are copied to an online service. Because you can save many different kinds of annotations locally, but online services typically only support a couple of fields, PictureSync allows you to copy the values from other annotations into these fields to supplement them.

By default PictureSync is already setup to map the most frequently used fields such as Title, Caption and Keywords (tags), you may only need to customise the settings if you use other fields. A complete list of fields is shown below and in PictureSync's Help window.

You map fields from your image-management application or embedded in your image files by specifying variables (placeholders/macros) representing them in the settings for the relevent service. These variables are replaced with their actual values from your fields upon upload, and your files remain unchanged.

All variables start with a $ (dollar) symbol. You may put multiple variables together, with punctuation and your own text around them. Specify the variables in the account settings for a service (choose 'Accounts' from the PictureSync menu, select an account, and then click the Settings button).

Example: If you wish to provide a link in the Caption, using a the URL field and displaying the Copyright, you could enter $caption <a href="$URL">$copyright</a>. If the copyright field is empty no link would be shown, however if you insert punctuation it would be shown.

Rules

These allow you to manipulate annotations and PictureSync's behaviour dynamically upon opening, saving and uploading files. This provides even greater flexibility in choosing which annotations you upload to which accounts, whilst leaving your original fields exactly as they were, or indeed for manipulating the annotations in your original files.

Note that a rule with an action of on Upload will only affect the values used for mapping, and the modified annotation values will not be embedded in uploaded files. If you wish to have them embedded in the uploaded files (but not the original files) enable the Annotations>Upload/Export>Embed preference. If you wish to change annotations in your original files (and thus also uploaded files by inheritance) use a rule that changes the annotations on read/save, making sure to Save Annotations (File menu or enable the Annotations>Save when opened/edited preference).

Example 1—You have a picture with the Keywords "Holiday, London" use the following rule and when PictureSync finds "London" in the Keywords for a picture it will move it to the City field.

Example 2—You frequently add the keyword "Home" to pictures but would like to automatically add more location information and a Private tag.

Fields

PictureSync Sources Services IPTC XMP QuickTime Spotlight
$title All All Headline Headline Full Name kMDItemHeadline
$object Except iPhoto* None Object Name Product Product kMDItemTitle ‡
$caption All All Caption-Abstract Description Comment kMDItemDescription
$keywords † All Many Keywords † Subject † N/A kMDItemKeywords †
$location Except iPhoto* None Sub-location Location N/A N/A
$city Except iPhoto* None City City N/A kMDItemCity
$state Except iPhoto* None Province-State State N/A kMDItemStateOrProvince
$country Except iPhoto* None Country/Primary Location Name Country N/A kMDItemCountry
$author Except iPhoto* None By-line/Author Creator Author kMDItemAuthors †
$copyright Except iPhoto* Fotki Copyright Notice Rights Copyright kMDItemCopyright
$categories † Except iPhoto* None Supplemental Categories † N/A Genre N/A
$people † Except iPhoto* None Contact N/A Performers † N/A
$event Except iPhoto* None Fixture Identifier N/A Album N/A
$url Except iPhoto* None N/A Web Statement N/A N/A
$rating Except iPhoto* None N/A Rating N/A N/A
$latitude Except iPhoto* Flickr — — N/A
$longitude Except iPhoto* Flickr — — N/A

PictureSync: The variable name to enter into a field in the respective service-specific account settings for its value to be shown.

Sources: PictureSync imports the corresponding field from the application directly. Note that in iPhoto, Caption is called Comment, and in iView Object Name can be called Product.

Services: The corresponding field is displayed automatically, you do not need to use variables for its value to be shown.

IPTC/XMP: PictureSync imports the corresponding field during a file import (drag and drop).

QuickTime: PictureSync imports the corresponding field during a file import (drag and drop). Note that Title is indexed by Spotlight as Title, and Product is not indexed.

Spotlight: You can search the corresponding field values in Spotlight. ‡ Spotlight indexes the iPhoto Title as Headline (Get Info does not display this but you can still search for it).

† These values are lists (where the value of a field pair is not a list comma-delimited coercion is used).