Photo File Copier

A lightweight macOS desktop app that copies photo selects out of a shoot folder — by pasted shot numbers or in bulk — so culling a gallery stops meaning dragging files by hand.

🖥 live demopublic repo

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The Build Loop

Because I shoot and cull photo galleries for LA Media, I kept hitting the tedium of pulling the keeper shots out of a huge shoot folder one drag at a time, so I built a macOS app that copies selects by pasted shot number or in bulk, that turns a manual, error-prone step into a paste-and-go, It taught me that the smallest tools that shave minutes off a repeated task are worth building — this one saves time on every single shoot.

What it looks like

The app before a run: source folder, output folder, and a pasted shot list — supports single numbers, comma-separated lists, and ranges like 1801-1802.
After copying: 5 matched and copied, 1 flagged as not found — the real per-file log from an actual run, not an idealized all-success state.

Photo File Copier

One-liner: A lightweight macOS desktop app that copies photo selects out of a shoot folder — by pasted shot numbers or in bulk — so culling a gallery stops meaning dragging files by hand.

Origin (the Build Loop)

Because I shoot and cull photo galleries for LA Media, I kept hitting the tedium of pulling the keeper shots out of a huge shoot folder one drag at a time, so I built a macOS app that copies selects by pasted shot number or in bulk, that turns a manual, error-prone step into a paste-and-go, It taught me that the smallest tools that shave minutes off a repeated task are worth building — this one saves time on every single shoot.

The problem

After a shoot you review the take and pick keepers. Getting just those files from the source folder to a delivery folder means either dragging them individually (slow, easy to misclick) or over-copying everything. When you review selects in Apple Notes as a list of shot numbers, there’s no clean bridge from that list to the files.

What it does

  • Paste keeper shot numbers (e.g. 1765, 1772, 1801) from Apple Notes and copy exactly those files.
  • Or copy every supported media file from the source folder(s) in one go.
  • Copies cleanly to an output folder — no duplicates, no manual dragging.
  • Supports multiple source folders.

How it’s built

  • Stack: Python 3.11 + tkinter (native macOS desktop app, macOS 11 Big Sur or later).
  • Notable engineering: parses a pasted, messy shot-number list into file matches; dedup-safe copying; a real packaged desktop GUI rather than a script.
  • Architecture: tkinter GUI → parse shot list / enumerate media → match against source folder(s) → clean copy to output.

Proof points

  • Solves a literal LA Media production step used on every shoot.
  • Native desktop app (tkinter), not a terminal script.
  • Public and installable.

What to show

  • Demo: It’s a desktop app, so “demo” = a short screen-recording or screenshots plus the public repo/download, not a hosted URL.
  • Visuals needed: the app window; a before/after of a paste → copied-selects run.

Case-study angle

The clearest micro-example of the Build Loop: a repeated 5-minute annoyance in the photo workflow became a small native app that removes it entirely. Not flashy — just exactly the kind of thing an operator builds for himself.