Think i’m being a bit stupid but……

Doing my yearly backup of photos from my mac to my 2 back up hard drives. This used to be easy with IPhoto as it kept the album name as the folder name. But in the last year i’ve ‘upgraded’ to Photos (no where near as good).

There doesnt seem to be an easy way of selecting about 40 named ‘albums’ and exporting them on mass to an extrernal hard drive and keep the album name as the folder name.

Help??

Nope can’t work it out!

Why don’t you just use Time Machine ?

I’ve got time machine aswell but I like to back up my photos separately (290gb) on seperate hard drives in ‘album’ folders as I can access then on any machine

Like I say it was easy with IPhoto

Make folder on desktop. Export album to folder. Save folder to back up. Delete folder from desktop. Repeat.

Thanks – is that the only way?

can I do it on mass (not at home to try)

So make folder ‘x’ on desktop – export 10 albums in folder x, they keep there album names, the export to hard drive?

Automator probably has the right tools for this job. I have never used Automator 🙂 but this kind of problem is what I believe it is good for solving.

What’s automater?

Most of us who work on our Macs every day have several tasks we perform repeatedly and which are both time consuming and tedious. Isn’t the whole point of using a computer that it’s supposed to do the boring stuff for you? Of course it is. And with a little preparation, you can make your Mac do exactly that as easily as dragging and dropping elements onto a window, using Automator.

What is Automator?
Automator is a tool included with OS X which allows you to build custom workflows to perform both simple and complex tasks, such as renaming files in a folder, combining multiple PDF documents, or converting movies from one format to another using QuickTime.

One source, but plenty of others on t’web

Most of us who work on our Macs every day have several tasks we perform repeatedly and which are both time consuming and tedious

😯

Really. I have no such manual tasks I perform daily or even weekly or monthly.

OP if I may say so you should go “cloud” for this. Flickr has 1tb free and you can keep it all private. Picasa too I think.

Is there a select all for Albums ? Or just go to Album view and do that manually for the export ?

No you select the album in Photos then export, iPhoto used to tick a box that kept the same folder name when exporting, so you could export on mass.

Not at home to check, but if you look at the pic of the export dialog here:

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/188510/how-to-export-photos-from-the-new-photos-app-in-full-quality

can you not set the subfolder format to be by album?

Really. I have no such manual tasks I perform daily or even weekly or monthly.

Me neither, but that’s hardly statistically conclusive 🙂 Sounds like the OP has had a suggestion to solve his problem that is very manual, so I thought Automator could help.

Really. I have no such manual tasks I perform daily or even weekly or monthly.

Do you actually do work on your Mac though or just use it for web surfing & such? Automator (and it’s bigger brother, Apple Script) are fantastic productivity tools and something that really separates Macs from Windows PCs IMO.

Yes zilog althoigh thats mainly document creation, reading and marking up pdf’s (do a lot of that on the iPad), emails, accessing stuff on web

What maunal processes are others doing and what do you use Automator for ?

There is a great Automator action that automatically uploads activities to Strava when you plug your Garmin in! (not work I know but a good example of a repetitive manual process)

I’ve had a quick Google and I reckon that what OP wants to do is easily doable using Automator or Apple Script as Photos supports both.

Applescript is what I primarily use – it can be used with any supported program e.g. most Apple ones, Adobe, Microsoft office, etc. It allows you to automate any function in those programs & most importantly lets them communicate with each other.

So one of my work tasks is setting up artwork to be printed. If I’m printing a banner then I add a 25mm border around the outside for the hem and a dot around the edge approx every 600mm for an eyelet. With Apple Script this can be done with 1 click. Another job involves producing 100s of similar artworks for signs. My script will look up the spec (i.e. size, text required, logos required, etc) in an Excel spreadsheet and then procedurally generate the artwork in Adobe Illustrator. Similar to using a mail merge but way more versatile.

OK got it. Interesting