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By Jeff Carlson |

Discover the Hidden Powers of the Image Capture App

What can you do with the image capture app?

If you manage photos on a Mac, you probably import the shots from a camera to an application such as iPhoto, Lightroom, Aperture, or Photoshop Elements.

But long before any of those came along, the way to add photos to your Mac was a little utility called Image Capture.

The Image Capture app is still there (you’ll find it in the Applications folder), and it does more than just copy photos to your hard disk. Some people prefer to save photos to their hard disk and manage them using the Finder, while others perform actions on the files before moving them into dedicated photo library software.

Here are some ways to take advantage of Image Capture’s features.

Automatic photo app launching

Even if you do use a library app, you may want to open Image Capture just to fix one of the most annoying OS X photo behaviors: automatically launching iPhoto when you connect a camera or memory card.

Open Image Capture and select the camera or card in the Devices list in the pane at the left. At the bottom, click the almost-invisible button that reveals the control panel for that device.

Image Capture’s device control panel

Image Capture’s device control panel

The pop-up menu labeled “Connecting This Camera Opens” reveals applications capable of working with photos. If you only ever use Lightroom, for example, you can choose that; choose Other if the app doesn’t appear in the list. For me, the first option is my preference: No Application. That way, I can launch the app I want to use on my own (and that’s no longer iPhoto).

There’s also a hidden advantage to this feature. Just as you can tell the Mac to stop launching iPhoto when a card is inserted, you can also choose different applications or actions for different cameras. If, say, you want to process photos from a DSLR differently than a point-and-shoot camera, use the control panel to specify an app for each camera.

Sort photos by attributes before import

The Image Capture interface is made up mostly of image thumbnails so you can preview what you’re about to import; drag the slider at the bottom-right corner to change the thumbnail size. But there’s so much more to a photo than the image.

Click the List View button in the lower-left corner of the preview area to view metadata about each image. Clicking a column heading sorts the list. For example, you may want to review only the images shot at an aperture of f/4, or click the Kind column (scroll right to view more columns) to group only raw images.

imagecapture_03_list_view

List view, sorted by aperture

Delete or rotate photos before import

One feature I wish Image Capture offered is a Quick Look preview of a photo. As it is, you can increase the thumbnail icon, but it’s still relatively small.

You can, however, select obvious misfires and delete them from the camera or memory card by clicking the red Delete button at the bottom of the screen. If any images appear with the wrong orientation, select them and click the Rotate button to turn them counter-clockwise in 90-degree increments.

Destinations and actions

The last component of importing photos using the Image Capture app is deciding where the files end up. The Import To pop-up menu offers the expected destinations—the Pictures, Movies, Desktop, and Document folders—as well as applications like iPhoto and Preview. You can also choose Other to specify a different folder.

Choose where and how photos are imported

Choose where and how photos are imported

What’s more interesting is what can be done after the photos are imported. Image Capture can run scripts that take further actions. For example, choosing MakePDF.app (a small application included with Image Capture) imports the images you select and creates a contact sheet containing them.

A contact sheet generated by the MakePDF.app

A contact sheet generated by the MakePDF.app

Using the Automator application (or AppleScript if you’re savvy with writing scripts), you can set up easy actions of your own. Let’s say you want to easily make a backup of every image you import. First, open Automator and choose Image Capture Plugin as the type of action you want to create.

Setting up an Automator Image Capture Plugin

Setting up an Automator Image Capture Plugin

Next, select the Files & Folders category at left and drag the Copy Finder Items action to the pane at right. Choose the original destination from the To pop-up menu.

To set up the backup, drag a new Copy Finder Items action to the pane and specify a different location, such as a folder on an external hard disk. Save the action with a descriptive name.

This simple Automator action makes a backup of your photos at import

This simple Automator action makes a backup of your photos at import

Finally, to make it work, choose that action from the Import To pop-up menu in Image Capture. When you import the photos, the files appear in both places.

Of course, you can do more complicated things if you have the chops—or even if you don’t. Casey Liss adapted a script by Dr Drang that imports iPhone photos and puts them into new folders named for the year and months according to the photos’ timestamps.

As you can see, Image Capture turns out to be a versatile photo import tool. Even if you already use Lightroom, Aperture, or another application, Image Capture is a quick way to pull images from cameras (such as when you want the pictures from a family member’s camera but don’t need to store them in your own photo library).

To see these tips and others in action, be sure to check out “The great utility of Image Capture” as part of Christopher Breen’s Mac OS X Mountain Lion Essential Training (which is still relevant in OS X Yosemite and Mavericks), and “Using Image Capture to clear the iPhone” by Bryan O’Neil Hughes as part of his Enhancing iPhone Photos with Lightroom and Photoshop course.

 

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