Best way to tell if an image is in a shared album?

[gurchik]

I'm trying to query my library for photos that are not in a specific Shared Album.

When a photo is added to a Shared Album, the PhotoInfo object in the Shared Album will have a different uuid, filename, path, etc. So what is the best way to determine whether it's in the Shared Album? Currently I'm checking if the original_filename, date, description, and owner are the same, but is there a better way?

[ferid333]

Hello @gurchik

To determine whether a photo is in a specific Shared Album, the best approach is to use osxphotos and compare the uuid of the photo in your library with the uuid of photos in the Shared Album. While the PhotoInfo object in the Shared Album has a different uuid, its metadata fields like original_filename, date, and description might match.

A better approach would be to:

1. Query the Shared Album and extract its photos' metadata (e.g., original_filename, date, etc.).
2. Compare these against the main library's photos using a combination of original_filename and a more robust identifier like date (or fingerprint, if available).

This avoids solely relying on matching multiple fields, which can be error-prone if metadata changes. Let me know if you'd like an example script!

[RhetTbull]

@ferid333 this is a Chat GPT output and not helpful. Please don't try to do engagement farming on this repo.

[RhetTbull]

@gurchik sorry I missed this question when you first posted it. There's a value in the Photos database that can be used to map a shared photo back to the original asset but unfortunately this is currently not exposed by OSXPhotos. The value is ZADDITIONALASSETATTRIBUTES.ZORIGINATINGASSETIDENTIFIER which maps to the PhotoInfo.cloud_guid of the origial asset. I created a simple script that does this as the feature is not currently built into osxphotos. To use it, select one or more photos in Photos then run:

osxphotos run https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RhetTbull/osxphotos/refs/heads/main/examples/albums.py

This outputs something like this:

Checking albums for selected photo(s)
Found 1 selected photo(s)
Scanning Photos database to match shared images to originals...
Checking photo IMG_0590.heic (3FF2856A-A2A3-4ADF-A8FB-818F0F4EC24D)
Albums:
   Best Photos
Shared Albums:
   Family

You can select an original in the library or a photo in a shared album and it will show you all albums and shared albums that photo is part of.