Hidden photos

[alandefreitas]

Hi!

I exported my photos a while ago and used to have some hidden photos that got exported successfully. I've moved to Digikam since then.

Do these pictures get some kind of special tag or rating I can use to find them later?

Thanks for this tool again :)

[RhetTbull]

Hi @alandefreitas No, hidden photos do not get any special tag or modifier unless you explicitly set one during export, for example, you could have done this to add a HIDDEN tag to any hidden photo:

osxphotos export /path/to/export --keyword-template "{photo.hidden?HIDDEN,}" --exiftool

If you still have the original photos library and know a bit of python, you could find all photos marked as hidden and then somehow mark them in digikam. The following script, if saved as hidden.py and run with osxphotos run hidden.py will list all hidden images:

from osxphotos import PhotosDB, QueryOptions

if __name__ == "__main__":
    photosdb = PhotosDB()
    hidden_photos = photosdb.query(QueryOptions(hidden=True))
    for photo in hidden_photos:
        print(photo.uuid, photo.original_filename)

Did you use a --directory or --filename template to customize the export path? If so, you could render those in the script to print out the export location. For example, if you'd done this:

osxphotos export /path/to/export --directory "{created.year}/{created.month}" --filename "{original_name}" then the following would print out the destination path for each hidden photo:

from osxphotos import PhotosDB, QueryOptions
import os.path

if __name__ == "__main__":

    # Set these to whatever you used during the original export
    export_dir = "/Users/rhet/Desktop"
    directory_template = "{created.year}/{created.month}"
    filename_template = "{original_name}"

    photosdb = PhotosDB()
    hidden_photos = photosdb.query(QueryOptions(hidden=True))
    for photo in hidden_photos:
        # render directory and filename templates; render template returns:
        # ([rendered_strings], [unmatched]): tuple of list of rendered strings and list of unmatched template values
        # below assume there are no unmatched template values (osxphotos export would have thrown an exception)
        # and that each template renders to a single value -- modify if you used a multi-value template
        directory = photo.render_template(directory_template)[0][0]
        filename = (
            photo.render_template(filename_template)[0][0]
            + os.path.splitext(photo.original_filename)[1]
        )
        exported_path = os.path.join(export_dir, directory, filename)
        print(photo.uuid, photo.original_filename, exported_path)

[RhetTbull]

PS -- I should add that you can recover the settings you used to do the export with the following command (assumes most recent version of osxphotos):

osxphotos exportdb --last-run /path/to/export

[alandefreitas]

I used your second script to find out which were the hidden images in my directory layout. I would export everything again with the tags, but there's a lot of new metadata I would lose since I moved to digikam.

Thanks! I would never guess this script at all :)

[RhetTbull]

@alandefreitas I thought about this some more and I think you can easily extract the path to all hidden images directly from the export database (.osxphotos_export.db in the export directory) assuming the export database is still present:

osxphotos exportdb /path/to/export --sql \
"SELECT export_data.filepath \
FROM export_data \
JOIN photoinfo ON export_data.uuid = photoinfo.uuid  \
WHERE json_extract(photoinfo.photoinfo, '$.hidden')=1"

This will query the metadata stored in the export database to print the path (relative to the export directory) for each photo that had been hidden in Photos. osxphotos stores a JSON dictionary of all the metadata for each photo in the export database and this contains the hidden key which indicates if a photo was hidden in Photos.

[RhetTbull]

Glad you got this fixed. I'm posting a more complete script here in case others find this in the future. The following script, if saved as hidden.py and run with osxphotos run hidden.py will find all photos that were hidden prior to export and add both a hidden EXIF tag as well as a hidden Finder tag. Using the Finder tag, you can find the hidden photos using tag:hidden in the Finder search bar.

"""Save this as hidden.py then run with `osxphotos run hidden.py` 
to add hidden keyword to photos that were hidden in Photos prior to export
"""

import os.path
import sqlite3
from typing import List

from osxmetadata import OSXMetaData, Tag

from osxphotos import ExifTool

# set these values to match your export path
EXPORT_DB_PATH = "/Users/rhet/Desktop/export/.osxphotos_export.db"
EXPORT_DIR = "/Users/rhet/Desktop/export"

# set this to the keyword you want to add to photos
HIDDEN_KEYWORD = "hidden"


def hidden_photos(export_db_path: str, export_dir: str) -> List[str]:
    """Reads export database to find photos that were hidden in Photos prior to export"""
    conn = sqlite3.connect(export_db_path)
    c = conn.cursor()

    # the export database stores a JSON dictionary of the photo metadata
    # in photoinfo.photoinfo; look there for photos that were hidden ("hidden" = 1)
    c.execute(
        """
        SELECT export_data.filepath
        FROM export_data
        JOIN photoinfo ON export_data.uuid = photoinfo.uuid
        WHERE json_extract(photoinfo.photoinfo, '$.hidden')=1;
    """
    )
    results = c.fetchall()
    conn.close()

    # the export database stores photo path as relative to the export directory
    return [os.path.join(export_dir, r[0]) for r in results]


def process_photos(photos: List[str]) -> None:
    """Process photos to add hidden keyword"""
    for photo_path in photos:
        if not os.path.exists(photo_path):
            print(f"{photo_path} does not exist; skipping")
            continue

        print(f"Processing {photo_path}")

        # add hidden keyword to photo
        ExifTool(photo_path).addvalues("IPTC:Keywords", HIDDEN_KEYWORD)

        # add hidden Finder tag to photo
        OSXMetaData(photo_path).tags += [Tag(HIDDEN_KEYWORD)]


if __name__ == "__main__":
    hidden = hidden_photos(EXPORT_DB_PATH, EXPORT_DIR)
    process_photos(hidden)