Scan images directly into Apple Aperture
Wouldn’t that be great? Hook up your scanner, fire up Aperture, click on Import and the images coming directly from your scanner plate? Although my scanner is shown as a source in the import dialogue you can’t import images with it directly from Aperture. But using Preview/Image Capture and Automator you can bypass this limitation.
In the Image Capture scan window you can define an automatic task which will follow the scan process. It defaults to Preview meaning that the scanned image will open as a new Preview document after the scan. But we can make the images import to Aperture after the scan just with tools which are build into Mac OS X and come with every Mac (besides Aperture). So here’s what you can do to scan directly into Aperture in 3 simple steps.
1. Make an Automator action
Open up Automator and click on the photos library item. Find the Aperture action “Import Photos” and drag and drop it on the workflow field. Then you can chose your desired project or a new project for the scanned images to appear. I have a project for all new images called @Review so I chose that one as my target project. You can set a referenced import or the deletion of your source images as well. If you want to chose the desired project or any of the other preferences every time you’re scanning you have to activate “Show this action when the workflow runs” in the Options of this action.
To make it a bit cooler we can assign one or more keywords to our scanned images automatically. Just drag and drop the “Assign keywords to images” action and add a keyword like “Scan” or something like that. Finally we can set some usual IPTC-tags with the “Set IPTC Tags” action. In the end you should have something like this (click to zoom):
2. Save it as a plug-in for Image Capture
Now we’re going to save the whole workflow we clicked together. But instead of saving it as a general workflow chose File > Save as Plug-in. Type in a name like “Import to Aperture” and chose Image Capture from the dropdown menu and click save. Now your workflow has become a freshly new plug-in of the Image Capture application. If you ever want to delete, edit or just backup your Image Capture Plugins you can find them in your user folder library under /Workflows/Applications/Image Capture.
3. Scanning and have fun
Plug in your scanner and open up Image Capture. A new scan window should open with your connected scanner as source. Now we have to define our freshly created plug-in as a task which will run after the image was scanned. Just chose your freshly created workflow from the Automatic Task dropdown menu and there you have it. So after you hit the scan button our freshly created workflow will run after the scan.
Just be creative with Automator. You can set up a lot of workflows for every thinkable scanning task and you can even backup your scanned images before or after importing them to Aperture by copying them into a new burn folder or make an archive from them which also could be automatically saved to a web server and so on…
About Matthias
Thanks so much for this post! I’ve been trying to figger this out for weeks! You have made my life much easier!
Hi Bill, glad my article was helpful for you.
Did you add any additional actions in your Automator workflow?
Thanks for the guide. It’s my first venture into Automator and it has opened up new possibilities.
Can you please let me know if this works under Tiger?
and if so how to get Image Capture to recognize Nikon Supercoolscan 500….
Thanks!
Hi Antony, this should work in Tiger too. And you can follow my article to get your scanner work in Mac OS X. in this article I explain how to get the Canon LiDE 500F to work but it should require the same steps for your scanner (except you have to download the appropriate driver for your scanner from Nikon’s website). Installing Nikon Scan will install the driver too which should be available system wide after that.
Krema,
Thanks for the reply, still no joy here I re-installed Nikon Scan 4.0 and upgraded it to 4.0.2 but Image capture still does see the Nikon Scanner, neither does aperture under import.
If I use import in Photoshop it pulls in the image via Nikon Scan so I know it is working.
Just havent yet been able to get Image capture or Aperture to see it.
Frustrating…..
I strongly suggest you to post your problems in the Apple Discussion Forums in the Using Mac OS X Tiger forum or search for it there. I bet there are other users with this scanner and they can help you much faster since I don’t have a Nikon scanner and don’t know how the Nikon software stuff works.
Well Nikon has been heard from……
“Thank you for emailing Nikon Tech Support. Unfortunately we do not support third party applications. We have not heard of any one having success using Image Capture with this scanner. While I have heard of other third-party software recognizing the scanner like Vuescan or Silverfast, however we are not familiar with their setup here at Nikon.”
Thanks for the help but look like am now @ at a Dead End in terms of implementing your elegant Aperture Workflow!
Antony, that’s very sad. But there’s one more thing you could try: The open source SANE project provides a generic TWAIN driver with support for a wide range of scanners. You can download the driver on MacUpdate and see if it works with your scanner.
Thanks for the info. I use an Epson 2580. Its software takes over and Image Capture appears after Epson Scan has done its work so it scans twice…a slow process. I have saved the images into a project as you suggest but cannot figure how to move them out of that project and add them into other projects. If I maintain the scanned project, it means that futur images will be scanned into the same project making it cumbersome. How do I move the files into other projects? Export?
Thx
thank you very much for this post…..now verything is o.k. with my scan canon lide 500F and Aperture…
take care and have a nice weekend hanabi
This is an excellent and concise introduction. Thank you.
I’m currently duping and tweaking a set of Automator scripts matching ‘batch’ scanning jobs. I saved a base script at a template.
Hi, thanks so much for your time and trouble! I followed your instructions and everything seems to go smoothly until after the picture scans. I cannot find anywhere that says save. And when I go to Iphoto the folder is there that I created in the Automator, but no picture. Have I missed something here. BTW I am running Tiger. Thanks again.
One more thing, I forgot to tell you that I have a Canon MP600. I went to the the Canon website and downloaded the newest ScanGear, but did not help.
doesn’t work, followed instructions and it just doesn’t work.
Oh, this works fine. But then I discovered a menu entry ‘Aperture’ already present in ImageCapture (Snow Leopard). It doesn’t do the keyword tricks and else – but puts the scanned images into a Project ‘ImageCapture’.
A hint at the top of the article would be nice.
Anyway – this blog is fun to read. Thanks a lot.
Danke für diesen Workflow. Sehr nützlich für mich !!!
Hey, nice plugin, but this is now embeded in Image Capture, I think.
Altho its even better, because in yours plugin can set more options about the picture scan.
First off, amazing thank you for posting this guide; I can’t wait to try this tonight once I get home, but my only concern is can I place multiple photos in my scanner flat bed or do I have to import an image at a time?