MacOS – simple script to duplicate files into a new folder based on a csv file

You can create two folder actions, one for images:

one for videos:

Both should be setup to receive files from Downloads folder.

The first step filters images and videos files.

The second step moves those files in the appropriate folder.

Be sure that folder action is attached to your Downloads directory (right click on directory, Services\Folder Actions Setup...).

To let Automator wait for the download to complete, you can add a Run AppleScript step, before the Move Finder Items step, similar to this:

on run {input, parameters}
    if input is {} then
        return {}
    end if

    repeat
        delay 1
        set {size:fileSize, busy status:Busy} to (info for (input as alias))
        if not Busy and (fileSize is greater than 0) then return input
    end repeat
end run

I whipped up a quick script that will copy the image for you (it will work with any type of file actually) and rename it from a plain text file with one prefix per line.

#!/bin/bash
file=$1
prefixes=$2
filename=`basename "$file"`
while read line
do
    cp $file "$line-$filename"
done < $prefixes

Put that into a text file, save it as copier.sh. Then in Terminal, run chmod +x copier.sh (make sure you’re in the same directory as where you saved the file, ideally the one with your images in it). Then run ./copier.sh myimage.jpeg prefixes.txt and you should have a bunch of copies with different names.

The prefixes.txt file (or whatever you want to name it) should have one prefix per line (which should be easy to get by copying and pasting from your spreadsheet).

Updated Version With Folders

#!/bin/bash
file=$1
prefixes=$2
filename=`basename "$file"`
foldername=${filename%%.*}
if [ ! -d "$foldername" ]; then
    mkdir "$foldername"
fi
while read line
do
    cp $file "$foldername"/"$line-$filename"
done < $prefixes

That will create a folder with the same name as the original file (if it doesn’t already exist) and place the copies in it.