Smart Albums for iPad Air Screenshots

A few years ago I wrote this tip on creating Smart Albums for your iPhone or iPad screenshots. I’m a big screenshot taker. I use them for keeping track of UI problems with projects I’m working on and even as a quick “note” to look into something later.

The problem is sorting the screenshots out from the rest of my 80 billion photos in my library. I use Aperture (yes, me and two other people) and created this Smart Album to sort out my screenshots from my iPad Air. You can probably adopt the logic for other devices as well.

Screen Shot 2014-08-22 at 4.04.59 PM

Basically it looks for files that match all of the following:

  • Text starts with “IMG_” – standard filename prefix for iOS device screenshots.
  • Pixel height and width is between 1,536 and 2,048 – this allows for both portrait and landscape screenshots to be returned
  • Camera Model is empty – pretty much all of my other images are photos from cameras that record their model. iOS devices do not store a value for “Camera Model” in their EXIF data.
  • File Type is other – no RAW or jpegs showing up here!

If you have suggestions or modifications, please let me know in the comments below.