Inside Aperture

Tethered Shooting in Aperture
Pages: 1, 2

Extending the Workflow

Obviously, the workflow described above is pretty simple. It contains a single Action and simply dumps your captured images to a project called Tethered. For many, myself included, this is enough. After I am done with a shoot, I can go in and keyword, caption, and move my images to a new project for organizational purposes. Furthermore, my assistant can do this for me as I shoot. But one can see how easy it is in Automator to expand things.

With the Aperture set of Automator actions, you can easily set keywords and caption information on import. Just add the appropriate actions after the import action. You could also choose to have Aperture export a low-resolution version of each image to a folder using one of Aperture's export presets. You could even send each image to Photoshop via Ben Long's Start Photoshop Roundtrip action, available for download here.

Time-Lapse Photography

Making time-lapse movies is easier than ever with a digital SLR. All you need is a sturdy tripod and an interesting subject. To make life easier, you can take advantage of Canon and Nikon's intervalometer functions. These special tools allow you to set up a camera tethered to a computer and have the computer control the interval between shots and number of shots taken. If you follow the same steps I have described above for tethered shooting, you can have your time-lapse frames automatically imported into an Aperture project. Within Aperture you can easily create a custom crop box for the format you are after and export the entire batch of images as a numbered sequence at the resolution you desire.

Using QuickTime Pro you can, in seconds, compile your individual frames into a time-lapse movie. If you don't have QuickTime Pro, you can also try making a time-lapse sequence in iMovie HD, iStopMotion, or Apple's Final Cut Express HD.

For fun, I made a really simple time-lapse movie of the beach in Portsmouth, Dominica. One evening I set up my camera on a tripod tethered to my MacBook Pro. I taped down the camera's focus ring and set the camera to Aperture Priority at the widest f-stop. I then instructed the Canon intervalometer tool (found under Tools in EOS Capture) to take a picture once every 15 seconds for about an hour.

Each image was imported to Aperture as it was shot. When the shoot was over, I created a crop-box on one frame to fit the dimensions of the HD format. I then used Aperture's lift and stamp tool to apply the crop to each image in the sequence.

Once Aperture finished cropping the images, I exported all the cropped versions to a folder using a preset I had set up for the resolution I was after. On export, Aperture renamed all the files numbered sequentially. I then opened the numbered sequence with QuickTime Pro and I had my time-lapse movie. QuickTime Pro allowed me to pick a frame rate and the resulting sequence of images turned out to be about a four-second movie, which you can view here. It was so easy that I can hardly wait to get out there and make more movies.

For an even easier time-lapse setup, you could take advantage of Image Capture in lieu of your camera's capture software to achieve easy time-lapse photography. The workflow consists of nothing more than the Take Picture action from the Image Capture set, followed by the Import Photos action from the Aperture set. You don't need to worry about setting up a "hot folder" for this one. Just download the Automator Loop Utility from www.automator.us, and download this workflow to your desktop.

Once you've opened the workflow and have made sure all the settings are correct, save the file and drag it onto the Automator Loop Utility icon. The Loop Utility will ask you where you want to save your applet and what interval you would like to use. It then creates a small application, which will run the workflow over and over again until you quit.

The only downside with the Automator Loop Utility is that the minimum time interval is 30 seconds. But if 30 seconds works for your project, it sure is an easy setup with no additional software or configurations to deal with. Just plug in your camera and run the app--it's that easy.

What's Next?

If tethered shooting, time-lapse photography, and customized workflows aren't enough to keep you busy, keep in mind that your "hot folder" can be used for all sorts of additional applications. Maybe you have a pile of slides you want to scan directly into Aperture. Just set your scanner to save each image to the Tethered folder and watch the scans appear in Aperture with all of your customized Automator actions applied.

I have included a few workflows, which you can use to experiment with tethered shooting. They are available for download here. The Simple-Tethered workflow is comprised of nothing more than an Import Photos action. When you open it in Automator, simply type "Tethered" in the spot for a New Project, save it as a Folder Action Plug-in, and you will be off and running.

If you want to make things a little more interesting, try the Extended-Tethered workflow. I set up this workflow to accomplish a number of tasks. First, I take care of the tethered shooting part with the Import Photos action. Then, I follow up by adding IPTC and keyword information. Finally, each image is exported as a small jpeg and transferred to a second computer over the network.

This can be useful when multiple people working in a studio want to quickly see how the shoot is going. It could also be used as a method of backing up your images as you shoot them by switching the Export Versions Action with an Export Masters Action. Replace the Move Finder Items action with the FTP Finder Items action and you can set up Automator to send those low-resolution images to your website for use on eBay.

As you can probably see by now, with Automator, the possibilities are endless, and more importantly, easy to achieve. Tethered shooting in Aperture is a snap, and when combined with additional actions in Automator, can be a doorway to new creative possibilities.

Micah Walter is a freelance photojournalist, writer, and teacher from Washington D.C., and a graduate of the photo tech program at the Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York.

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Showing messages 1 through 5 of 5.

• Tethered Shooting in Aperture
  2008-05-27 12:33:42  dasven [Reply | View]
  
  
  ..Tethered shooting can also be very useful for remote camera operation. By using a WiFi connection (or a very long data cable) and a radio remote trigger, the photographer can easily grab images captured with the remote camera as they are shot, directly to the computer..
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• Extending the Workflow
  2008-05-27 12:28:58  dasven [Reply | View]
  
  
  ..Micah Walter is a freelance photojournalist, writer, and teacher from Washington D.C., and a graduate of the photo tech program at the Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York..

• Making a CD or DVD of an Aperture slide show
  2007-10-13 15:43:15  DWProds [Reply | View]
  
  
  I have a very simple but lengthy slide show of our recent trip to Italy (about 700 shots). In Aperture, the program plays fine - accompanied by a few cuts from my iTunes library. This isn't anything fancy - just the features of slide show that are provided in Aperture. But how can I transfer this to a CD or DVD? I've tried exporting to FinalCut Pro - the images show up, but I can't work them separately. I tried iDVD - and this too was no go. Since the images are laid out in sequence, it's important to maintain the sequence and I really don't want to import them into a new program (like FC Pro or Premier) and do the whole thing from scratch.
  
  Can you or anyone help?
  
  DWProds@verizon.net
  
  I'd be extremely grateful.
  
  

• Automator Loop Utility
  2007-04-29 11:33:52  z_evil_genius [Reply | View]
  
  
  Actually, it is really easy to fix the time limitation on the automator loop utility. Just drag the app to the script editor, and near the top it lists the minimum time. Change that number, click compile. I also selected save from the file menu, but I'm not sure it's necessary once you've compiled it. Anyway, I set the minimum down to 0.5 seconds. However, I strongly suggest you don't ever set any loop that low. It's very difficult to stop the script at that point. Plus, with PhotoBooth, it keeps resetting because it takes a few seconds to snap a picture. Eventually it does do it, and that's your one shot to stop the loop. So be careful with that. Hope this makes the utility more useful for people.

• Tethering Canon to Mac
  2007-04-19 12:09:45  JDedmonPhoto [Reply | View]
  
  
  Have followed your instructions to the t, and only able to download the images with Eos Capture if I manually push the download images key. Any ideas of what component could be missing?