Fetch Softworks

Newby question/help (10 posts)

• Started 17 years ago by sam h
• Latest reply 17 years ago from sam h

• sam h Member

  Hi Guys

  I wonder if anyone could give me some advice. I am a press photographer, I normally send my pictures to picture and news desks by e-mail, either on my laptop via my mobile phone if it's urgent or from my Mac back home. I'm getting asked more and more to send pictures by FTP, but I know nothing about this. Fetch seems to come out well in reviews when I check Google.
  As I said, I know nothing of how FTP works. Would I be right in thinking I just buy the software, install it and after getting the addresses/passwords from who I want to send pictures to, I simply enter this into the program and off it goes, or am I missing something. I understand how e-mail works in that my isp server gets the e-mail for me, do I need to go through a server service like my isp when sending files by FTP or does the program search out the addresses that I provide and send it for me (surely this would slow the whole process down if it has to search for addresses each time I want to send files?)
  Can anyone explain how it works (please). Thanks in advance.
  Sam

  Posted 17 years ago #

• Scott McGuire Administrator

  Hi Sam,

  No intermediate servers are needed when you use FTP and Fetch; you connect directly to the server you want to send your files to, and move the files directly from your Mac to that server.

  Yes, it pretty much works like: you run Fetch; enter the hostname of your client's server, enter your username and password, and possibly a folder name where the pictures are supposed to go on the server; Fetch connects; and then you drag your photos to the Fetch window to send/upload them to the server.

  You can find more information about how moving files with Fetch works in the Quick Start and Introductory Fetch Tutorial sections of our help (you can just click on the links here).

  We offer a fully functional trial of Fetch for 15 days, so once you're ready to give it a try, you can test it first to make sure you'll be happy before you need to purchase. And you can let us know if you have further questions, either now or then!

  Thanks,

  Scott McGuire
  Fetch Softworks

  Posted 17 years ago #

• sam h Member

  Hi Scott

  Thanks for taking the time to reply to my questions. If I could ask one more. As I have said I'm a press photographer, I normally have to send around 10 to 20 pictures out at a time, and these have to go to 15 different newsdesks. I can do this with e-mail, I just have different groups that I send to, such as Sunday papers, national daily's, sport magazines. Can I do the same with fetch?

  Posted 17 years ago #

• sam h Member

  Hi Scott

  Thanks for taking the time to reply to my questions. If I could ask one more. As I have said I'm a press photographer, I normally have to send around 10 to 20 pictures out at a time, and these have to go to 15 different newsdesks. I can do this with e-mail, I just have different groups that I send to, such as Sunday papers, national daily's, sport magazines. I can do this with one e-mail, Can I do the same with fetch?

  Posted 17 years ago #

• Scott McGuire Administrator

  Hi Sam,

  When you send out 10 to 20 photos at a time, do you usually want to send the same set of photos to each of the clients, or do different photos go to each client?

  Thanks,

  Scott McGuire
  Fetch Softworks

  Posted 17 years ago #

• sam h Member

  Hi Scott

  The same set of pictures will be going to all clients.

  Posted 17 years ago #

• Scott McGuire Administrator

  Hi Sam,

  There are two options for doing that with Fetch.

  The first is to set up an AppleScript that will tell the Fetch application to send the same set of photos to different servers. On our website we provide an AppleScript that you can configure to do this, so you wouldn't have to write one from scratch. The set-up is slightly more complicated, but once the script is set up correctly, it's a drop-the-files and forget about it solution.

  The other option is to set up a set of shortcuts in Fetch, and then drag and drop the photos to the icon representing each different shortcut. (A shortcut is like a bookmark in Safari.) This is a little easier to set-up, but it would require you to drag and drop the photos to each server in turn each time you had a new set of photos to send, which might become tiresome. However, if you don't always want to send the photos to each of your clients every time, this would be a better option, because you could choose which clients get each set of photos.

  We are considering ways to make the process of uploading the same files to multiple locations easier for future versions of Fetch.

  Thanks,

  Scott McGuire
  Fetch Softworks

  Posted 17 years ago #

• sam h Member

  Hi Scott

  Thanks for your reply, I've been busy at work and haven't had a chance to try the Apple scripts that you suggest to enable me to auto upload multiple photographs to multiple servers. I've downloaded the fetch example scropts that you suggested, I have no idea how to set this up, is their a guide or better instructions that you or anyone else can suggest?

  Thanks

  Sam

  Posted 17 years ago #

• Scott McGuire Administrator

  Hi Sam,

  The example script you want to use is the one titled "Multi-Server DropUpload." To configure it you need to know the URLs of the sites you want to upload to - URLs are a single line of information that describe the hostname, username, and path of where you want the files to be uploaded.

  Instead of trying to figure out exactly what the correct URLs for the servers you want to upload to are, it would be easier to let Fetch do the work for you - shortcuts in Fetch are really URLs in disguise.

  So here's what I would suggest:

  * Create shortcuts in the Fetch application for all the servers that you want to upload. If you're not sure how to create shortcuts, see the creating a shortcut help topic.
  * Then, in the Fetch Shortcuts window, select the first shortcut for the server you want to upload to.
  * Choose Edit > Copy (or type Command-C).
  * Run the Multi-Server DropUpload script. It will ask you to enter the destination URL.
  * Choose Edit > Paste (or type Command-V). The URL will be pasted into the AppleScript's prompt.
  * Click the Add button.
  * Now the AppleScript will show you a list of the URLs it is configured with (which should be just the one so far).
  * Switch back to Fetch, copy the next shortcut.
  * Switch back to the script, and click the Add button to bring up the entry form for adding another URL.
  * Paste the next shortcut into the script, click Add.
  * Repeat for all the shortcuts, and once you're done, click the Done button in the script. The script will quit.
  * Now the script is ready to use; you will not have to do the steps above again unless you want to add more servers.

  To use the script:

  * In the Finder, drag and drop the files you want to upload to multiple servers on to the Multi-Server DropUpload script's icon.
  * The script will ask you to select the servers you want to upload to. Select them by clicking on them.
  * Click the Upload button.
  * The script will run Fetch and start uploading the files; at the end it will open a log showing you what it did.

  I hope this helps. As I said, we're aware the process is not as easy as it could be, and hope to improve it in the future.

  Thanks,

  Scott McGuire
  Fetch Softworks

  Posted 17 years ago #

• sam h Member

  Scott

  Thanks for your reply, I appreciate it.

  sam

  Posted 17 years ago #