repeat while (importing)
delay 0.5 — wait 1/2 second and try again
end repeat

This will loop until iPhoto is done importing and then continue.

I had the same problem, and finally fixed it this way :

property theFolder : "HardDisk:Library:Desktop Pictures:Nature:"
property album_name : "TestAlbum"

tell application "iPhoto"
-- activate
set exAlbum to exists album album_name
if exAlbum then
set myAlbum to album album_name
else
set myAlbum to (new album name album_name)
end if
select myAlbum
set photoList to {}
set thePhotos to list folder theFolder without invisibles
repeat with eachItem in thePhotos
set newPath to POSIX path of (theFolder & eachItem)
copy newPath to the end of photoList
end repeat
tell myAlbum
import from (photoList)
end tell
end tell


Hope it helps.

D.S.

As to the rest, __as I understand it__, the ‘bug’ (having to put delay statements everywhere) isn’t really in iPhoto per se, but partly the way applescript works, and partly just timing — it takes a while for the imported images to a) be imported, b) get properly ‘registered’ with the application and library. Since importing happens asynchronously in iPhoto (so you can do other things while you’re importing), i think the applescript ‘import’ command returns immediately. This happens all the time in applescripts / apple events– not just in iPhoto.

Given something like:
import from _somewhere to the_album
set title of the first photo to “blah”

iPhoto starts importing, and the import is gonna take a few seconds or minutes or whatever. But the script doesn’t check to see if the import has completed, and the import command returns immediately. Since apple events such as those you’re using don’t wait around for a return value (i.e., “OK, I’ve imported the photos.. what now?”), the next line in the script gets executed without regard to the outcome of the first. In this case iPhoto hasn’t finished importing the images when the next line tries to do something with one of those images. You could change this by adding in some checking, try blocks, etc. (maybe you do this already in your production scripts?) There’s some documentation (i think…?) on the apple developer site about error checking and handling exceptions, etc, in applescripts.

Also, applescript is slow . . . To me, it’s kind of like “snail-mail” — things take a while to get and respond to messages. What’s taking so !@#$ long!!???

In case it’s not obvious, I’m no applescript expert. I have a love-hate relationship with it– mostly hate, really. But I have had to use it in my work and have had to use some parts of iPhoto’s (meager) script support. I’d rather be writing cocoa code!

Hope that helps… you can ping me offline if you like.