Folder Structure As Album Names?

[VanishingTacos]

Instead of shorting the folders as year months and days it would sort them by the name of the iCloud album name. I am not sure if this is already a feature or not but I would love to see this.

Awesome tool by the way!

[karlbeecken]

+1

[kpiwko]

This is a prerequisite from my perspective - currently the pyicloud library does not support nested folder:

picklepete/pyicloud#297

[AndreyNikiforov]

In the current code base we build destination folder using --folder-structure template with asset timestamp as the only input. Supporting any attribute from the asset (or meta attribute like album) for templating may be not very hard.

As we are adding more flexibility to templating, it will be valuable to have small number of commonly used patterns easily available, e.g. --target-pattern={YMD|YM|Y|Custom} and --target-pattern-custom="{created_date:YYYY}/{created_date:MMM}/{album}/{asset_name}{asset_size}.{asset_ext}" (just an example for the idea, not a through-through proposal yet). That will reduce confusion for those not familiar with python templating used for --folder-structure parameter today.

#190 may help with selecting most used patterns.

[petebocken]

Is this still being entertained? I would be very interested in being able to automatically export folders/albums out of iCloud Photo Library into equivalent directories.

For example, I have a folder called "Holidays", inside that a folder "Christmas", inside that an album "2020-Christmas" and then the photos in that album.

What I would want exported, is a directory structure "/Holidays/Christmas/2020-Christmas/{photos}"

If you are able to actually read the meta attribute for albums, not sure if you are able to go as far as completely replicate the folders and albums structure I have setup in the Apple Photos Mac app.

[angadsingh]

+1

[steilerDev]

+1
Currently migrating my Lightroom Library to iCloud Photos and looking for a way to backup the data and this project seems like a great tool to help me with that. However I would like to be able to copy the Album/Directory Structure that I have in the iCloud Library.

I was thinking about using the output of '-l' in order to iterate over all albums within a shell script, but unfortunately '-l' does not support sub-directories.

[mwdossantos]

Any update on this one?

[holomekc]

Hmm I would also like such a feature! But how do you expect this to work? Sounds kind of difficult.

Every photo in an Album is part of the overall photo library. But not every photo of the library is part of an album.

So when a photo is part of an album then use album folder structure for it? If not use year,month,date structure?

What do you do when you remove a photo from an album after it was synced with the tool? I am not sure how it works currently this would require to scan every existing album for the file (name) again an then move it otherwise you would end up with duplicate files.

Or is this easier than I think?

[steilerDev]

@holomekc I would imagine this being possible using symbolic links:

• Have a data directory, where all your photos are stored (e.g. "Library")
• Replicate the folder structure of your photo albums
• Link the files from the data directory into the appropriate folder and refresh this structure on every sync run

this would allow an efficient usage of disk space, while enabling easy navigation of structure

[steilerDev]

I actually hacked something together over the weekend using the pending PR that enables folder support (picklepete/pyicloud#297), to see how well this could work. Feel free to check it out: https://github.com/steilerDev/icloud-photos-sync (but it is in a very rough shape).

Once pyicloud adds this upstream and #179 is closed (aka the new version is available to this project), I could try and include the changes in a more streamlined fashion. Also I am waiting for this PR to get included as well....once this is done I believe I can finally have a proper iCloud Photos backup solution....

[timvdsm]

I actually hacked something together over the weekend using the pending PR that enables folder support (picklepete/pyicloud#297), to see how well this could work. Feel free to check it out: https://github.com/steilerDev/icloud-photos-sync (but it is in a very rough shape).

Once pyicloud adds this upstream and #179 is closed (aka the new version is available to this project), I could try and include the changes in a more streamlined fashion. Also I am waiting for this PR to get included as well....once this is done I believe I can finally have a proper iCloud Photos backup solution....

Hi @steilerDev
I want to sync my iCloud photos to my synology NAS.
In my iCloud I have created Folders per year (2019, 2020, 2021, ...) and within these folders I created the Albums itself.
I only want to sync the Folders per year including their Albums off course (so not the "All photos" folders from iCloud). I suppose this is possible using your your solution? Would be really great to have that!

[steilerDev]

Hi @timvdsm , my project is simply a Proof of Concept. Not sure how I will continue this (this also depends on this and the pyicloud package). If I decide to actually build this I will keep this feature request in mind.

[cream68]

any updates?

[AndreyNikiforov]

any updates?

What are your expectations for the album name in the folder structure? The behavior I am curious about:

• what should happen if one photo is in multiple albums?
• IIUC "All Photos" meta-album will have all photos, should it be as yet another album in the hierarchy or treated somehow specially (e.g. one folder structure for "All Photos" and another for all albums)?

[cream68]

I have very little experience in programming but the approach "one folder all photos, another folder all albums" seems promising.

[PizzaPino]

#482
Can this work be used here?

What are your expectations for the album name in the folder structure? The behavior I am curious about:

• what should happen if one photo is in multiple albums?
• IIUC "All Photos" meta-album will have all photos, should it be as yet another album in the hierarchy or treated somehow specially (e.g. one folder structure for "All Photos" and another for all albums)?

Personally I think keep using the hierarchy structure makes the most sense as in YYMMDD for non-album photos and YYMMDD_album name for album-photos while keeping the hierarchy. This way I can quickly look for pictures that were took around the date or even on the same day but not in the album.

For images in multiple albums: I think it’s the easiest to keep outputting photos in the current folder format that we have right now and just add additional album folders with symbolic links to the photos in the non-album folders. That way having images in multiple albums doesn’t waste space. This goes hand in hand with downloading all photos in the old folder structure though.

[gap777]

What would it take to get this feature added? It's a pre-requisite for me to migrate away from my current approach (manual copy photos to NAS, sync to OneDrive for off-site backup) to my desired approach (keep photos on phone, sync to iCloud for off-site storage, sync to NAS via icloudpd for on-site backup).