Identify JPG files with EXIF information?

btw… need something kinda scalable… the data salvage recovered 147,000 JPG files, of which only 28,000 were actual “printable” pictures (a large number are thumbnails, previous “versions” from iPhoto, and of course, legitimately deleted files that I don’t want back).

Trying to bring up a directory window in the OS with only 20,000 photos can be pretty slow… trying to get Spotlight to generate a complete results list can be even more painful.

To my way of thinking, the ideal solution would be some command-line utility that I can nohup and allow to run as long as it takes.

But again, I’m open to any and all suggestions.

I didn’t see any command-line exif information programs that would be useful to you, but a little bit of Ruby will go a long way here. It seems like you know a bit about programming, so here’s some example code that solves a simplified version of your problem, since you didn’t state how to distinguish the images you want from the ones you don’t.

First, install the exifr library. From Terminal:
sudo gem install exifr

Then save this code in a file named image.rb in a directory with all of the images to process:
http://pastie.caboo.se/166226

Feel free to message me if you want more info.

@rictic, I’ve been looking for an excuse to get into Ruby. So I definitely will give your link some attention… I expect it likely could run faster than the other solution that I came across later in this saga.

Thanks!