if by design

&I’m a big fan of Flickr so when Apple’s Aperture arrived I immediately looked for a clever way to upload photographs between the two. The solution was to use a combination of keywords, smart albums and Automator actions.

Step 1: Mark photos for upload to Flickr

Open your photos for upload in Aperture and tag them with the keyword flickr.

Step 2: Create the ‘Upload to Flickr’ smart album

The first step is to create a new smart album within Aperture. It should be based on two filters

• Keywords - include photos with the keyword flickr
• IPTC - exclude photos with the keyword uploaded

Step 3: Create the Automator action

This next step creates the Automator action. You can either follow it step by step or download my action.

Load in photos from Aperture

From the Aperture list of actions add Choose Albums and tick the Upload the Flickr album.

Update keywords

From the Aperture list include the Assign Keywords to Images action and add the keyword uploaded to the list.

Export Images

From the Aperrture list include the Export Images action. Set the Export Setting and choose a destination for the images on your hard drive.

Upload Images

Add Fraser Speirs’ Flickr Automator 0.1 (found under Finder) action next entering your username and password.

Tidy up

The next three actions clear the export images from your hard drive. First add the Get Specified Finder Items and choose the folder specified in the Export Images action above.

Now add the Get Folder Contents action and the Move to Trash action.

Open Flickr

This is optional, but a nice touch - add the Get Specified URLs action from the Safari list and enter the URL for your Flickr account. Finally add the Display Webpages action to launch Safari.

Save your action

Save your action, ideally as an application and that’s it.

Step 4: Keep track of which images have been uploaded

Another optional, but nice touch is to create another smart album, ‘Uploaded to Flickr’ in Aperture to track which photos have been uploaded. Create the album with two filters;

• Keywords - include photos with the keyword flickr
• IPTC - include photos with the keyword uploaded