Award Sounds Music, Photography and Consultancy

I wrote in an earlier article that there was a way to use iPhoto to handle tethered shooting, but at the time the process was on another computer. I've now tested the process by installing it on the Mac Book I'm using right now.

Here's the process in more detail:

1) Download the attached script

2) add the script it into  /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts

There's a delay in the script because it takes a short while for a photo image to download from camera, so it's a rough guess at how long we have to wait for that to happen before we can import to iPhoto. I think the delay could be shorter, but I can live with it as it is.

3) Go to the Pictures folder and add a Folder Action to it. If you're not familiar with this, it's best to do this from its parent folder then select Pictures and select to Attach a Folder Actions. You can get there by clicking Go, then Home from the Finder menu)

4) Add the script we've just stored in /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts to the actions for this folder.

5) Close that.

6) Launch Automator (it's in Applications)

7) Select  Image Capture in the left-hand pane

8) Drag Take Picture to the right-hand pane

9) Switch on your camera (not connected to Mac)

10) Change the USB settings to PTP

That should be in for a first draft.

Test the process:

a) Connect the camera to the Mac with the usb cable

b) Press the run button on Automator

c) Wait a few seconds.

d) Does the photo appear already imported into iPhoto? It should launch iPhoto if it's not already running

If it does, then from now on, all you need to do is plug in your camera, open automator and click run for every photo you want to take.

Better still, you can:

a) save the workflow as an application. Usually this appears in Documents. 

b) Go to Documents

c) Drag the newly created application to your Dock.

d) Click on the app icon in the dock - it should take a photo and import into iPhoto.

This also works with RAW and jpg images at the same time, as well as catering for Nikon's NEF format which is where I started with the problem.

If the process doesn't work, feel free to contact me. First of all, it's worth checking your image capture settings. Automator has a nice set of actions for itself, on the left-hand pane click Automator, then drag the View Results action to the right-hand pane under your actions. Can put it anywhere to display what's happening in the workflow. Useful as a quick debug tool.

Also decide if you want the photos to remain in Pictures folder and on the camera. You can change the settings in the workflow to remove the photo after taking (and downloading) it. You can add a folder action to remove the file after importing to iPhoto.

There are two main issues to be aware of:

1) Add any picture into Pictures and it will import to iPhoto. For me that's fine. I only use that directory for photos, although since I've been moving away from iPhoto, I may change around the automator and folder action scripts

2) Your camera is set to PTP mode. Mine stays in that most of the time, unless I know I'm going to be using it for a lot of photos out in the field. Then I may switch it back to Mass mode. The choice is yours, play with the two settings on non-critical photoshoot and figure out how you want to work with it.

If this is too complicated, then perhaps one or more of the sotware packages I reviewed in a recent article would be more useful. Not all do tethered shooting, I think I'll update the reviews to show that. 

This was for iPhoto 6 on OS X 10.4

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