iPhone Photography and Cable Releases

iOS 5 introduced many cool new features for photographers. Among those, is the ability to use the volume up button to take photos. Naturally, the volume up button on your headphones works to take photos! I seems obviously that it should after the fact, but it’s not something most of us are likely to try.

This means, every iPhone includes a free cable realease. This is HUGE for an iPhone because the current shutter buttons aren’t very good for keeping your phone steady. Interestingly, I’ve found that it’s often much easier to get burst shots when using my headphones compared to just the volume up key.

Bluetooth

Perhaps the coolest part is that this can be paired with bluetooth devices! I’m not sure if every headset with volume controls will work (as the buttons need to map correctly to the iPhone), but if a bluetooth headset can increase the iPhone’s volume it should work. What I have been able to confirm is that a bluetooth keyboard is perfectly capable of acting as a remote.

Using a wireless remote opens up even more possibilites, especially when considering that the remote will start and stop video capture. 

Hope someone else will make use of this for their iPhone photos!

posted by Michael Ball @cycomachead

Update on Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 1:26 AM by Joseph Linaschke

I just tested this with a third-party headset, and it works perfectly. Not only is it great for those steady shots, but it’s also perfect for photographing yourself — without having to have your extended arm in the photo. Fantastic!

-Joseph @ApertureExpert
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Aperture 3.2 with iCloud support is up on the Mac App Store

Support for iCloud among a bunch of fixes.

Doesn’t mention it, but I would guess the iCould features will require OS 10.7.2 as well

Add Aperture Face Names as Keywords—Within Aperture

I like Apperture Faces but was having trouble getting the names to appear as tags when I uploaded to flickr using FlickrExport.

Below is an AppleScript that adds the names of faces in the photo as keywords.

Based on a script by mr. applescript

This article showed me how to get started with AppleScripts.

Cut and paste this code into a new script called e.g add_face_keywords in your Apperture scripts directory:

(* This script looks in the faces database and gets names of the faces in the selected photos
   If then makes a new keyword with the name (and parent keyword "Face")  *)

tell application "Aperture"
    activate
    -- locate the current aperture library
    set aperture_library_path to do shell script "defaults read com.apple.aperture LibraryPath"
    -- expand the '~' if it's in there
    set aperture_library_path to do shell script "echo " & aperture_library_path
    -- add trailing slash if necessary
    if aperture_library_path does not end with "/" then
        set aperture_library_path to aperture_library_path & "/"
    end if
    
    -- locate the databases
    set the faces_db_path to aperture_library_path & "Database/apdb/faces.db"
    set the library_db_path to aperture_library_path & "Database/apdb/Library.apdb"
       
    set the selected_items to (get the selection)
       
    repeat with z from 1 to the count of the selected_items
        set this_photo to item z of the selected_items
        my extract_face_record(this_photo, library_db_path, faces_db_path)
    end repeat
end tell

on extract_face_record(this_photo, library_db_path, faces_db_path)
    set the master_uuid to every paragraph of (my SQL_command(library_db_path, "select masterUuid from RKVersion where uuid=\"" & id of this_photo & "\";"))
    --get detected faces for the image key
    set the face_keys to every paragraph of (my SQL_command(faces_db_path, "select faceKey from RKDetectedFace where masteruuid=\"" & master_uuid & "\";"))
    
    -- for each face
    set the face_records to {}
    repeat with this_key in the face_keys
        -- get name. NOTE could select fullName instead of select name if you wished
        set the face_name to my SQL_command(faces_db_path, "select name from rkFaceName where faceKey=\"" & this_key & "\";")
        -- add it as new key word
        tell application "Aperture"
            tell this_photo
                make new keyword with properties {name:face_name, parents:{"Face"}}
            end tell
        end tell
    end repeat
end extract_face_record

on SQL_command(faces_db_path, command_string)
    return (do shell script "sqlite3 " & (quoted form of faces_db_path) & " '" & command_string & "'")
end SQL_command

Update on Friday, September 23, 2011 at 12:39 PM by Joseph Linaschke

For anyone not quite clear on what happens here — this script adds the Face name to the photo as a Keyword within Aperture. Normally when you export from Aperture, Face names are added as Keywords automatically (check your Preferences). However as James discovered, when using the Flickr export, the names were missing. So this workaround allows the Face names to be added as regular Keywords in Aperture first, so any export type will pick them up. Cool!

-Joseph @ApertureExpert

Skitch is now free

Evernote has acquired Skitch and it is now free at the Mac App Store.

Read the news here. 

It’s no Aperture, but allows easy annotation of photos among other stuff.

Mission Control Keyboard Shortcuts and Aperture

I worte this hint for Mac OS X Hints, so it’s a bit genernic, but it applies to Aperture (as that’s what caused me to write the hint.) In Lion keyboard shortcuts to switch spaces (now “Desktops”) conflict with the Browser shortcuts for star ratings, rejcts, etc. Rather than change my long Aperture shortcuts, I wanted to remove the ones for Mission Control. Unfortunately, it’s not very obvious.

So, here’s the hint:

Mission Control includes keyboard shortcuts for each space which use the Control key (^) and Control-Option (^ ⌥). These keys can conflict with quite a few high end apps which use many keyboard shortcuts, and turning them off isn’t so obvious. 

Spaces (Now “Desktops,” which I suppose is more accurate…) 1-10 are defined by ^ 1-0 and 11-16 by ^ ⌥ 1-6. These are useful to know if you regularly use lots of spaces, and are easy to remember.

You can easily turn off ALL Mission Control shortcuts in System Preferences, but the Control Left-right keys are still quite useful, and don’t conflict with many apps.

The trick is to have all the desktops active BEFORE you try to edit keyboard shortcuts if you want to edit just the ones for the desktops.

To turn off just the keys for each space, first go into Mission Control.

Now you’ll need to add the maximum of 16 desktops to remove all the keyboard shortcuts. (If the ^ ⌥ shortcut is good for you, you can reassign all of them as you wish, but you’ll be limited to only 10 number shortcuts.)

To add a space, keep clicking on the semi-transparent desktop in the upper right corner of Mission Control till it won’t let you.

Now go into the Keyboard pane of System Preferences, and go to Keyboard Shortcuts > Mission Control.

Now you can turn them off as you wish.