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Opening
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Apple's Image Capture sits there in most people's OS X Applications folder going unnoticed and unused. You might be surprised though, this seemingly benign little app has a number of tricks if you only dare double-click.
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Image Capture
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You'll find it right there in your /Applications folder
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It does some basic stuff
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It will recognize and camera or camera like device and allow you to browse the images on it
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SD card
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iPhone, iPod, USB Camera
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Devices show up in the left hand column
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There is a list view and a thumbnail view
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The list view shows 17 columns of metadata
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Aperture, depth, width and height, EXIF, focal length, shutter speed, location data, etc.
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Can sort by any column and when you return to thumbnail view it will retain that sorting
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Slider at the bottom to control the image size. Also button to allow rotating.
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Can select multiple images and rotate them all at once
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Importing
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Drag individual or groups of items directly out of image capture to import them
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You can also use the 'Import' or 'Import All' buttons
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Under the 'Import To:' setting you can specify one of 3 presets
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Pictures, Desktop, or Documents
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There is also an 'Other' option and you can choose any folder or volume you'd like
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In the 'Device' settings panel (lower left) you can set the checkbox for 'Delete after Import'
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Deleting can also be done by selecting images and clicking the "delete" button at the bottom of the window.
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Will delete directly off you device
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In the 'Device settings' panel you can also set the Application that launches, or doesn't, when a particular device or camera is connected to your Mac.
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iPhoto, Image Capture, Preview, Auto Importer
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Also Other… to specific an App of your choice
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And my personal favorite, 'No application'
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Auto Importer
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This is a special little app that will automatically import your images from a device to a specified location when you connect it
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Set it under the 'Connting this opens' options
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The next time you connect that device the app will run and import your photos
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How do you control the location?
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If you're quick, while it's running you can go under it's application menu and choose 'Preferences'
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Be quick about change setting though because the app quits when it finished importing
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Actually the App is in /System/Library/Image Capture/Support/Application/AutoImporter.app
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If you launch it you can get to the Preferences
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Set the Import folder
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Option to create a subfolder each time you import
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Drag in tokens to append to folder name, date, camera name, user name, sequence #
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Also can set if you want to delete items from the camera after import.
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Import to Application
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Import to iPhoto, does exactly that opens up iPhoto and imports the images
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Import to Preview
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Can be handy if you want to do some quick processing of an image
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Crop, adjust color
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Save out to a different format using Export (TIFF, PNG, PDF, JPG)
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Add annotations. Lines, speech and thought bubbles
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Images are imported into the root of your ~/Pictures folder
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On OS X Lion and newer edits auto saved. My images came in locked, so you have to unlock or duplicate before editing.
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Preview has a File > Import from Camera option.
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Basically opens up a mini version of Image Capture
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Select the device to import from
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Can import, rotate before import, delete images from camera
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Import to Mail
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Go straight from Camera to email. As far as I could tell images weren't imported
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A quick way to visually see and select photos to Mail to someone.
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Fix a camera rotation before sending to to Mail
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In Mail you can then choose the 'Small', 'Medium', 'Large' or 'Original Size' options.
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Create a Contact Sheet or Prints
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Import To: Make PDF
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Opens the MakePDF app (/System/Library/Image Capture/Automatic Tasks/MakePDF.app)
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Will bring in the imported images and place them on a sheet based on layout options
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Contact Sheet, Crop to standard sizes, fit to standard sizes
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Create and save your own layouts by choosing New Layout…
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Set paper size
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Crop or fit options for photo sizing
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Save as a PDF or print it.
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Images are imported to the ~/Pictures folder
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Create a web page
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Import To: Build a Webpage
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Opens the Build Web Page app (/System/Library/Image Capture/Automatic Tasks/Build Web Page.app)
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Will import the images to the ~/Pictures folder and then create a web gallery and open it in Safari
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You get thumbnails of each image 3 across with the file name as a title
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You can click on an image to see a page with a larger version and clicking that image returns you to the thumbnail page
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The app copies and scales all the images, generates the HTML for you, and places all of it in a 'Webpage' folder in your ~/Pictures folder
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There is an index.html file at the root of the folder
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Also a 'web files' folder that has the page html files and resized image files
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You should be able to upload the folder to a web server for sharing
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The Build Web Page app opens briefly while to processes and creates the files, but then closes. It does have some options though
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Open the app from /System/Library/Image Capture/Automatic Tasks/Build Web Page.app
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Go to Build Web Page > Preferences
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Set the Background color (default is a dark grey)
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Set the Image name font color, but not the font
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Toggle showing image names
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Set the thumbnail and full size image widths
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All images are generated as JPGs
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You can also use the app directly to open a folder or group of images. File > Open.
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Some other things to note
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The upload to a web server isn't automated
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The 'web files' folder that contains the assets has a space in the folder name, so that might not be compatible will all web hosting servers
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Despite how they are rotated in Image Capture, all photos are added to the webpage in landscape. The original photos are imported into the Pictures folder at full size and in the right orientation
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Use for Scanning
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ImageCapture supports scanning
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You may find you prefer it's simple interface vs the scanning app that came with your scanner.
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When you launch Image Capture and you have a supported scanner attached then it should show up in the list of Devices
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When you select the scanner it will make an Overview scan and bring up the interface
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There are two modes.
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A kind of "quick scan" with just a couple options at the bottom of the window
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Or a more advanced mode with the option on the right hand side
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"Quick Scan" mode
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Control scan size
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Detect Separate Items will try to find edges and make multiple scans if you have multiple items on the scanner bed
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Detect enclosing box will try to scan all the items in a single image but cropped to the outer edge of the combined items
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Scan to full scanner bed size
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Scan to lets you set a location to save the scans
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Pictures, Documents, or Desktop folders
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iPhoto, Preview, or Mail
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Set your own folder
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Click the 'Show Details' button to see all the options
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Kind: Color, B&W, or Text
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Colors, sets the number of colors or level of greyscale
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Resolution
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Size and rotation
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Auto selection
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Off, Scans the entire bed or lets you click and drag to define areas to scan. you can also set rotation on each selection and select multiple areas
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Detect Separate Items
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Detect enclosing box
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If you use auto options the bounding boxes are displayed and you can still manually adjust them
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Set the scan locationr
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Set the default filename. It will auto append a number to the name to avoid conflicts
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Control format
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JPG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, BMP, PDF
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PDF and TIFF options let you combine multiple scans into a single document
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Apply image correction before scanning
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Brightness, Tint, Temperature, Saturation
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This can be a great way to revive an old scanner if it no longer has software support
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Image Capture supports something called TWAIN, so as long as there are drivers that provide a TWAIN it should work with Image Capture
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BTW, TWAIN isn't an acronym for anything, but some will say it's "Thing Without An Interesting Name".
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If you can't find TWAIN support for your old scanner there is a project called SANE (Scanner Easy Access Now)
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And for OS X Lion and Mountain Lion there is the TWAIN SANE Interface for OS X
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You need to install 2 packages: SANE backends and the TWAIN SANE Interface
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Can also install the SANE Preferences Pane, which will allow you to enable, disable, and configure backends for specific scanners
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This is open source, so it can be a bit fiddly, but I have been able to use my old Canon CanoScan N670u
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I have had a few quirks using Image Capture and TWAIN SANE
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Scans will sometimes be garbled. I can sometimes fix by adjusting the settings, changing the format or crop area, etc.
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If scanning with TWAIN and Image Capture fails there is always the awesome VueScan ($39.95 std or $79.95 pro)
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Closing
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So who knew you could do so much with this little app? We'll now you do.
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