Actually, I just found a workaround. At every designation of 'filenames' I follow it with a series of loops testing each filename to see if it is preceded by '._' My supplement to the code is working well if anyone needs to have hidden files removed from file lists.
Great File! One quick question though - how might I go about removing hidden files from file lists? I notice that when I have hidden files in the same directory as the images I am trying to retrieve, hidden file versions with prefix '._' appear first making file selection very non-intuitive. Any solutions?