Forget iPhoto, save all of your Photo Stream photos to a folder on OS X

One of my favorite components of iCloud is Photo Stream. I love having instant access to all of my photos on both my iPhone and iPad. Having instant access to my photos on my laptop is awesome too, but there is one major caveat.

You see, to access your Photo Stream photos on your Mac computer, you have to go through iPhoto — which I hate. It takes forever to load and the UI is terrible. Luckily, I’ve just come across a software-free way to access my Photo Stream photos on my computer…

An interesting tip recently surfaced in the Macworld forums that shows you how to setup a simple Apple Script to copy your Photo Stream photos into a folder on your computer’s hard drive. I know it sounds difficult, but it’s actually quite simple.

All you need is a Mac computer, and the latest version (’11) of iPhoto.

Step 1. Make sure iPhoto’s iCloud setting is turned on by going to Settings > iCloud on your Mac

Step 2. Once it’s activated, open your Apple Script Editor by typing ‘Apple Script’ into you Spotlight search bar

Step 3. Then, enter in the following code:

Step 4. Be sure to replace the set target_folder with a folder of your choosing, and click Run. That’s it! You should now see your Photo Stream photos populating into the specified folder.

The script doesn’t continuously run in the background, so you’ll need to do this every time you want to view your latest photos. But you can save the script as an application in your /Applications folder to make things easier.

Any questions?

[Redmond Pie]