MacMost Now 301: Using Image Capture to Control Your Camera

The Image Capture program on your Mac can give you direct control over the pictures on your digital camera. You can even take pictures with your camera while connected to your Mac. You can also create Web pages and PDFs using your photos.

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Video Transcript: Gary: Hi this is Gary with MacMostNow. On today's episode lets learn how to use image capture to control your camera from your MAC. So image capture is this great little application that's in your applications folder and comes with every mac. When you run it you get to have direct control over a digital camera plugged into your Mac, and do all sorts of different things with the photos on it and even have it take pictures while connected to your Mac. 
 So when I first run the image capture I can see on the left here all of the digital cameras connected to my Mac. When I select one I get a list of all of the photos on it and lots of information about the individual photos. Now one of the great things I can do here is I can actually go through the photos and edit the ones on the camera, for instance I can select one and hit delete, I can also go ahead and view them in this mode rather than in the list mode and I can go ahead and import an individually selected photo, several if I select several, or all of them. I can also increase the size of the icons here so I can see the photos a little bit better. I find this very useful when I need to take some quick photos for business use as opposed to photos that I want to then import into I-photo. I can take some quick pictures, open up image capture, be able to get the photos right off the camera and never have them go to my I-photo collection which is for family photos. 
 One of the neat things you can do is you can choose to share your camera right here, and any other Macs connected to your network can then launch image capture and see shared cameras on other Macs so you can have a digital camera hooked up to you I mac and turn on image capture, turn on shared camera, and then go ahead and launch image capture on your Mac Book connected to the same network and be able to see the photo on that camera remotely at another location in your house. 
Another cool thing you can do is you can select your camera and go to file, take picture. And this brings up this window here. And what you can do with this window is you can manually take a picture with your camera. So here I've got my small little cannon camera here and its just turned on in regular mode as I would to read the photos, but if I go ahead and tap the space bar while this window is open it will actually then go ahead and take a picture with the camera. Then I end up with that picture, right here, then I can go ahead and do what I want to do with it, I can also set it instead of just taking the picture normally I can set it to automatically download new images to a folder, and perhaps even delete from the camera after downloading. AS I did this manually, it will just be on the camera regularly, here it is under today's date. Then you may have also noticed that you can set the camera to take pictures on a regular basis. So you can do automatic and say, take a picture every hour, have it start, put your camera on something, be better to put it on a tripod, have it hooked up to your make and it will take a picture that will appear then in the image capture list here and on the camera, and if you've also turned on sharing you can actually then view those pictures on other machines connected to your network. 
 So here's the catch, most cameras do not work with this take picture function. For instance when I hook up my newer Panasonic cameras to image capture, it simply won"t take a picture. However it seems like ever camera I tested will work with the basic Image capture functionality. I've been able to get pictures off of the camera. Here is another cool thing you can do with image capture. You can select several photos like this, and build a quick web page by using this pop up menu, selecting build web page, which is a special choice in that menu. Once you have that selected you can click the import button and what it will do is create the special web page, it will launch Safari and then show you the web page in Safari and its got the three images, I can click on one and it will enlarge it. I can use it up here, its in the picture folder, and it has this very long name to it. I can go ahead and if I wanted to go ahead and copy that HTML page and the images to a web site that I own. Just a quick way to create a little gallery of photos from image capture. You can also switch this to make PDF and then click on import and it will go ahead and create this PDF it will launch this make PDF program, and you have this little context sheet here that shows all the images. Then you can go ahead and change different things about it, and different types of layouts; save it as a PDF. Image capture also works with scanners so if you don't want to use the software that came with your scanner you can just go ahead, put the scanner in it and it most cases it will recognize it in image capture, and be able to do a quick scan that way. So check out image capture in your applications folder if your looking for an alternative to I- photo that gives you more direct control over the pictures on your camera. Till next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMostNow.

Comments: 8 Responses to “MacMost Now 301: Using Image Capture to Control Your Camera”

Peter Nachtwey

15 years ago

I just upgraded to Snow Leopard. I don't see a QuickTime X in my Applications folder. I only have QuickTime Pro 7. Something I do gets the new quick time to appear but it isn't clear what it is. Also I have tried to do a screen capture but QuickTIme X just locks up. I have a 1920x1200 screen and that is a lot to capture. I think I need to capture only part of a screen. At home I have a Intel Mac Mini.

BTW, a while back I asked about reprogramming the keys. I figured out how to make a application specific set of keys for Netbeans so while in Netbeans I can use the F9 key and not go into expose.

Gary Rosenzweig

In your applications folder you should see "QuickTime Player" -- that's the player app for QuickTime X. In the Utilities folder should be "QuickTime 7 Player"
I've captured much larger screens than 1920x1200, but on a more powerful Mac.

Gary, thanks for this video - very helpful! One question: You mention that you can't use the "Take picture" function of Image Capture with every camera. Are you aware of a list of cameras that do allow taking pictures with Image Capture? Also, what camera did you use in this video? Thanks.

Gary, thanks for this video - very helpful! I have two questions, though:
a) You mentioned in the video that you can't use the "Take picture" function in Image Capture with all digital cameras, but only some models. Are you aware of a list of digital cameras that are compatible with the "Take picture" function?
b) What camera model did you use in the video?
Thanks!

I'm not aware of any list. In that video I believe I used an old Canon S500. It didn't work with my newer Panasonic.

Ross Wright

14 years ago

Hi.Gary. In a related thing to Image Capture,have you heard complaints of scanners (especially Canon) having problems with OSX10.6.4 and Image Capture in this new version.I have looked all over for a fix,and it seems to be related to Intel only Macs.
I have a Canoscan 8400F.It is recognized by my Mini and will do an overview,but will not scan.
Have you seen any Apple docs or Canon's that will fix several models.
I have seen "all in one's" that will print ok but in some cases the scanner is not even seen by Image Capture

I've not heard anything, no. Sorry.

In my last post to you,the model I said should have been the Canon PIXMA-MP560.I found my solution thanks to a post on Amazon by
Otto Ohla. All of the following is his comments.

[Copied text replaced with link by editor]
http://www.amazon.com/review/R28I048LIQFMIT/ref=cm_cr_dp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B002GP7Z6Y&nodeID=172282

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MacMost Now 301: Using Image Capture to Control Your Camera

Comments: 8 Responses to “MacMost Now 301: Using Image Capture to Control Your Camera”

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