Photos app - Export unmodified original - how to/help

Questions & Suggestions
1

The new Photos app has a hotkey for exporting photos (⇧⌘E) but it doesn’t have one for saving the original. However there is a menu item for saving the original, so I thought to build a simple macro in keyboard maestro to activate it and assign it to a hotkey (probably ⇧⌘S, which was the hotkey for saving the original in Aperture)

Problem: The menu item text changes based on how many photos I have selected. The text is “Export Unmodified Original For X Photos…” where X is the number of photos I have selected. Is there any way to have keyboard maestro pick this menu item since the text is always changing?

Thanks!

2

Here's a start:

Photo Export Original.kmmacros (19.0 KB)

It may not work on your system depending on whether your colors match, etc. But like I said, it's a start. Works on mine.

3

Hey David,

Firstly – keep in mind that a menu item can be a regular expression if it starts with the caret character (“^”), so menus that change aren't usually all that difficult to deal with.

^Export Unmodified Original

Here's the basic methodology of a macro for this task that drives the OSX UI.

Export Selected Photos via Keyboard Maestro.kmmacros (4.5 KB)

Much better yet is to use AppleScript, since Photos is somewhat scriptable. See this thread:

-Chris

3 Likes
4

Thanks, Chris. That is perfect! I’ll check out your Applescript solution too.

5

Hey David,

It's much faster and exports to a dated folder on the Desktop.

Of course the destination is easily adjusted.

-Chris