I take a lot of screenshots when I research products, both on the desktop and on the iPhone, so having some way to automate the process of organizing my collection is important. The problem is that screenshots images taken with the iPhone have no EXIF metadata. This means there is no straightforward way to produce a list of all your screenshots.
After a little bit of experimentation, I found a workable but not ideal solution. You can use the lack of EXIF metadata as conditions to group all the images. Screenshots are saved as PNG files on the original iPhone and the iPhone 3GS (the two models I had access to) and have no EXIF records. The only other metadata fields available are filename, file size, and modified, and imported dates. The PNG extension for the filename is the one existing feature you can search for, all others have to be unknown. I selected two features aperture and ISO, even though one would work in the hopes that this would reduce any false positives.
A Smart Folder recipe for iPhone Screenshots
A Smart Folder recipe for iPhone Pictures
[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one. The illustrations in the blog posting above may clear up questions about the process.]
After a little bit of experimentation, I found a workable but not ideal solution. You can use the lack of EXIF metadata as conditions to group all the images. Screenshots are saved as PNG files on the original iPhone and the iPhone 3GS (the two models I had access to) and have no EXIF records. The only other metadata fields available are filename, file size, and modified, and imported dates. The PNG extension for the filename is the one existing feature you can search for, all others have to be unknown. I selected two features aperture and ISO, even though one would work in the hopes that this would reduce any false positives.
A Smart Folder recipe for iPhone Screenshots
- Match all of the following conditions:
- Aperture is Unknown
- ISO is Unknown
- Filename contains PNG
A Smart Folder recipe for iPhone Pictures
- Match any of the following conditions:
- Camera Model is Apple iPhone
- Camera Model is Apple iPhone 3GS
mdfind -onlyin $HOME/Pictures \ 'kMDItemKind == "Portable Network Graphics image" && \ kMDItemPixelHeight == 480 && kMDItemPixelWidth == 320'The original posting of this procedure can be found here, with some illustrations of the process.
[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one. The illustrations in the blog posting above may clear up questions about the process.]
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