Aperture Users Network

One of the biggest strengths of Aperture is that, as an Apple program, it integrates so well with the Mac Operating System and other Apple software— seamless integration across the the iLife and iWork applications (whether creating a slideshow in Keynote, a brochure in Pages or combining images and video in iMovie) has always been a hallmark of the program. Users have also been able to extend the abilities of Aperture with Automator, scripting a number of custom additional uses and features.

With the release of Aperture 2.01 (if run on OS X 10.5.2 and later) Apple has unleashed a powerful new ability that will enable Aperture to integrate with many third party programs by leveraging OS X and the scripting language Applescript. With several new AppleScripts downloadable from Apple's site, it's now possible to create books, magazine spreads and more in third party programs like Adobe InDesign that automatically update when changes to the files are made in Aperture. It's also possible to drop in low-res JPEGS of these files and have them update with the high-res versions when the project goes to print.

Using a technology in OS X 10.5 "Leopard" called Open Dialog, Apple programs can now provide access to all of the user's Aperture and iPhoto libraries, including high quality previews, from within third party applications, without ever having to open the original programs.

How is this linking/tracking achieved? Thanks to a new "fingerprinting" technology introduced in Aperture 2.01, each image version is assigned a unique text string (the fingerprint) in the IPTC Special Instructions tag. Applescript is then able to track this version across other programs via the OS, allowing Aperture to communicate more directly with 3rd party programs then ever before. As a result, it's possible to make corrections to the versions in Aperture's Library and have those updates apply to any previously placed preview in other programs. Also, when the designed piece is ready for export, the user can automatically swap lower quality previews with high-resolution exports of the version from the Aperture Library as part of the final export for offset or direct-to-plate printing.

Fingerprinted previews can be incorporated in to a wide variety of current third party applications, assuming they can accommodate a few basic requirements. The application containing the placed preview must either provide access to the preview's IPTC Special Instructions tag, or be able to provide the name and location of the placed image file. If the later is provided, AppleScript scripts can use the Spotlight architecture of Mac OS X to retrieve the metadata from the file. The value of the "Special Instructions" tag is a unique identifying text string, understood only by Aperture. Once retrieved, a script can use it to locate the preview's related image version, and its corresponding master image, within Aperture, to provide updates, edits, or swap out for the high-resolution image exports. Naturally, the more scriptable the hosting application, the smoother the process is.

Let's see how this can all be put to use, using a real world example from InDesign.


In creating a new marketing brochure, you can insert images into the layout via browsing your Aperture Projects and Albums in the InDesign standard file choosing dialogue box. Navigate to the Photos group of the Media category, viewing your Aperture Library structure from within InDesign. Selecting an individual image from an album or project, you can toggle a larger preview of the image with the spacebar, the same QuickLook preview feature you've witnessed in Finder. Once inserted, the applescript tracks where versions of an image are placed via the aforementioned finger-print.


From the Applescript InDesign scripts menu, the selected images can be assembled into a new album in Aperture via the applescript without ever leaving InDesign, keeping images used in a specific layout assembled together for your convenience when you do return to Aperture. An image selected in the layout can also be quickly revealed in Aperture if the version in use needs additional corrections, for example adjusting the exposure or cleaning up dust. With the corrections completed, Aperture will generate an updated Preview that will automatically replace the prior preview in the layout. Also, via the applescript, you can add images from the Aperture directly in to a InDesign Library for re-use elsewhere within the layout. Another great addition to the toolset is the creation of caption fields strait from the embedded IPTC Caption data. Lastly, once the project is completed and ready for distribution and printing, the low res preview files can be updated and replaced with high quality exports from Aperture though any of your standard image export presets.

Apple has produced an informative video demonstration of InDesign scripts applied to a sample project, with both the scripts and the same projects available for download.

We spoke with Sal Soghoian, Product Manager for Automation Technologies at Apple, about what user feedback prompted this new integration. Sal responded, "Aperture does a fantastic job of managing and organizing images and their related metadata. Companies with small publishing workgroups have been asking for a way to take advantage of these abilities to use Aperture as an ad hoc asset system, providing images and metadata for their projects. The blocking issue has been relating distributed previews back to their source masters. Organizations have tried complex naming schemes but these are difficult to implement and maintain. Fingerprinted Previews and AppleScript solve this issue."

What implications does this new tracking and integration feature hold for the future of the application? With fingerprinting now supported across the photographer's stable of programs, Aperture is further positioned as a central point in any workflow.

When asked about what this fingerprinting technology holds for the future of Aperture and photographer workflow, Sal had this to say, "This technology can enable a variety of powerful solutions. For example, the AppleScript website at Apple (www.apple.com/applescript) has another Aperture example called Publish for Approval. Using the same underlying technology as the desktop publishing tutorial, photographers can select a group of images in Aperture and automatically publish them as a website hosted on their own computers using the built-in Apache web server included in Mac OS X. Their customers can then view the images on the internet and select the ones they like. Their selections are instantly noted, tagged, and grouped within the photographer's copy of Aperture!"

Using AppleScript and Fingerprinted Previews, photos, even those distributed across networks, can always be related to their source images, no matter when, where, or how the previews are used. That's a powerful concept.

In the long run this heralds a large change in the way that Aperture communicates with other programs, and we can envision this fingerprinting as the first step in a whole range of applications that perform these replacement features automatically, integrating the scripting portion of the task into their workflow. We can also imagine sophisticated systems being built around AppleScript that would allow large studios to create custom automations that solve very thorny issues that crop up regularly in a high-volume environment.

Also of note is that Applescript can be called from inside programs or plug-ins, so someone could develop programs that can perform these file replacement things from the OS, avoiding the Applescript menus completely. For example, it is no longer far fetched to envision an Aperture Image Gallery for Dreamweaver extension, or maybe a stand alone Quark to Aperture Image Replacement utility.

In any case, this is yet another technology that's been added to the Aperture arsenal, and another that has the potential to reduce the strain of the photographic workflow.