Quick and dirty Hipstamatic print workflow

I love the Hipstamatic app for my iPhone (now I really wish I had an iPhone 4), but getting the prints out of the app and into Aperture with the Lens and Film information intact has proven to be quite the challenge. I think I finally did it, so let me share how it works for me (on a Macbook Pro):

Warning: You should be familiar with the Terminal and UNIX command line if you want to follow these steps!

This works for me. I might work for you. It also might destroy all your data and impregnate your cat. I take no responsibility. Use at your own risk!

I use the following software to make all this work:

1. Hipstamatic (well, DUH!)
   
2. Photo Grabbr
   
3. exiftool
   
4. Aperture
   

I found Photo Grabbr and exiftool through Google, so I'm sure you will too.

First I publish all the prints from Hipstamatic app to Flickr:

1. Create Set
2. Add 9 images to set
3. Publish set to Flickr
4. Rinse and repeat until all images have been taken care of

In Flickr, move all the newly uploaded images into a set (I have called the set *surprisesurprise* "Hipstamatic").

On your Mac, use the program "Photo Grabbr" to download all the pictures from your Flickr set onto your harddisk.

Now you have the prints on your computer, just the way they were created in the Hipstamatic. Unfortunately (at least in my case), the keywords and image dates were not readable in Aperture, and the geoinformation was wrong (longitude was west instead of east). So I created a bit of shell script magic to remedy that.

I use this script to fix the dates and keywords:


#!/bin/bash

while [ -n "$1" ] ; do
# Extract Date (dt) from File
dt=`exiftool "$1" | grep "Modify Date" | cut -b 35-53 | sed "s/\-/:/g"`
# Convert to TouchableDate (touchDate)
touchDate=`echo $dt | sed "s/[^0-9]//g" | cut -c 1-12`
touchDate2=`echo $dt | sed "s/[^0-9]//g" | cut -c 13-14`
touchDate=`echo $touchDate.$touchDate2`
keywords=`exiftool -Software "$1" | cut -c 35-999`
echo $1 - $dt - $touchDate
exiftool -AllDates="$dt" -IFD0:DateTimeOriginal="$td" -sep ", " -keywords="$keywords" -keywords "Hipstamatic" "$1"
touch -t "$touchDate" "$1"
shift
done


(You can copy the code and paste it into a file called i.e. convertDates.sh. Then run it and pass it all the downloaded jpgs from Flickr: convertDates.sh *.jpg)

Then I use the following shell script to flip the Longitude from West to East:


#!/bin/bash

while [ -n "$1" ] ; do
long=`exiftool -GPSLongitudeRef "$1" | cut -b 35-53`
echo File: $1 "<$long>"

if [ "$long" == "West" ] ; then
exiftool -GPSLongitudeRef=East "$1"
fi

if [ "$long" == "East" ] ; then
exiftool -GPSLongitudeRef=West "$1"
fi
exiftool -GPSLongitudeRef "$1"
shift
done


(Again, copy code to file, make it executable and pass all your JPGs as command line parameters as above)

When I import these pictures into Aperture, the date is set correctly, Lens, Flash and Film information is in the keywords and the images are located correctly on the map.

Easy, ain't it?

iPad blogging

As a little addendum to the last post I wanted to say that I wrote in on my iPad, which actually worked quite well, in a 6.5 finger typing sort of way. I would liked to have included some screenshots, but uploading images from the iPad is obviously not something the Apple engineers deemed necessary to include. So let me hand another FAIL to Apple for that!

Rowmote Pro for iPad Review

Ok, so I thought Snatch didn't look polished enough on my iPad and maybe Rowmote might be able to be my new best remotecontrolfriend. Boy was I wrong.

After the 4,99$ download and setting up I was greeted by a friendly screen with controls for adjusting volume, skip forward/backward buttons, a menu button and a play/pause button.

That's all. Every button in multiple incarnations, presumably to fill up some space on the iPad screen, which would otherwise look either rather empty or like a home for very large buttons. And these buttons don't even relate very well to the Apple remote control, because the left/right and top/down controls are quite separated.

Naturally I started looking for a way to control the Plex media center application on my Mac mini, which needs a few more keys to function best. I came across a very nice and big trackpkad, which pushes the pointer on the Mac screen highly reliable to where you want it to go, a keyboard which overlaps half the trackpad when active and an application launcher to start your favorite applications with a single tap instead of mousing to the Applications folder to fire up your programs.

But different remote layouts? Customizable buttons? Nada. Rowmote is a very simple remote, and a good trackpad/keyboard replacement. If you need a programmable remote for your Mac, go get Snatch.

I would say, for the money they charge, Rowmote is A big FAIL. However, considering that all that I wrote above already seems to be public knowledge (I should have read some reviews), I'm willing to take the blame and half the FAIL.