MacMembraneThere are peels everywhere…

Often times I need an image for MacMembrane and an app icon or a screenshot won’t do the trick. To find relevant, interesting and legal images I use the amazing Flickr search tool CompFight.

Use CompFight to Search Flickr

CompFight does away with Flickr’s stingy 10 search results page and replaces it with browser wide thumbnail results based on your keywords. It also let’s you add Creative Commons/Commercial paramarers to your search. I leave these on so that my results are narrowed to only images that I can use on my blog without violating copyright.

Search CompFight from MarsEdit using AppleScript

As I said, I use CompFight to search images for my blog, and when I’m writing for my blog I’m in MarsEdit. Here is an AppleScript to take the selected text from a MarsEdit and search CompFight for CC images.

tell application "MarsEdit"
	activate
	try
		set needImg to selected text in document 1
	end try
end tell

try
	if needImg is equal to "" then
		activate me
		try
			set needImg to text returned of ¬
				(display dialog "Enter keywords to search CompFight:" with title ¬
					"Nothing Selected" default answer "" buttons ¬
					{"No Thanks", "Search"} default button 2)
		end try

		my addSyntax(needImg)

	else

		my addSyntax(needImg)

	end if
end try

on addSyntax(needImg)
	if needImg is not "" then
		set AppleScript's text item delimiters to " "
		set theTextItems to text items of needImg
		set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "%20"
		set needImg to theTextItems as string
		set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {""}
		open location "http://www.compfight.com/#search_type=tags&query=" & ¬
			needImg & ¬
			"&commit=Search&license=1%2C2%2C3%2C4%2C5%2C6&original=1&safe_search=3"
	end if
end addSyntax

How to Use the Script

Copy and paste the above code into Script Editor (in Applications >> AppleScript) and save it to your scripts folder. Select some text in MarsEdit and run the script. A new browser window will open with your search terms pre-populated. Because the script adds the CC parameters to your search, any image you see should be usable on your blog.

It isn’t the most complicated script in the world, but it does eliminate a few steps when searching for blog images, and eliminating simple but repetitive tasks is what AppleScript is all about.

Need some more MarsEdit AppleScripts and tricks? Try 2 AppleScripts to Simplify Your MarsEdit Workflow and MarsEdit Breaks it’s Silence with Sent to Weblog Sound. And don’t forget to Subscribe to MacMembrane.