Hello fellow photographers. I import all my pictures into Aperture, and now I'd want to know whether there is a way to see which focal lengths and apertures I use most (apart from clicking every picture separately and looking at the Metadata).
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Need help with Aperture
- Thread starter Patriks7
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If you are handy with Applescript you could write a script to scan your library and extract the aperture and focal length from every image.
Step one would be to write a script that would walk through the library accessing every image.
Step two would be to figure out how to extract the desired information from each image and save it to disk in a text file.
Glancing through this site it looks like there is enough information here to figure it out if you are good with Applescript. Not real hard but not for the novice scripter.
Examples
I haven't listened to it but this podcast by Sal Soghoian about AS and Aperture may prove useful.
Podcast
Step one would be to write a script that would walk through the library accessing every image.
Step two would be to figure out how to extract the desired information from each image and save it to disk in a text file.
Glancing through this site it looks like there is enough information here to figure it out if you are good with Applescript. Not real hard but not for the novice scripter.
Examples
I haven't listened to it but this podcast by Sal Soghoian about AS and Aperture may prove useful.
Podcast
Depending on how many photos you have in your library, you could try this: Show all pictures (Library -> All Photos), go into list view (Shift+L), and then sort after the various categories. A 'total' and 'selected'-counter is shown below the list.
Attachments
I am with Jeremy on this, the easiest is using the List view, arranging the columns and then sort by focal length or aperture. This is usable on every project which is nice and useful.
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Thanks, but I guess I am even below a "novice scripter"
But probably should give it a try sometime, seems very useful.Ah, thank you! Might not be exactly what I was looking for, but it worked good enough.
I found quite interesting so tried to build something in AppleScript but it was amazingly slow to iterate over my, reasonably small, library. So I've started working on an AppleScript app in XCode to do it. Unfortunately Apple have changed everything in 10.6 so I'm have to re-learn as AppleScript Studio is no more and AppleScriptObjC is the order of the day. This may also prevent what I am writing running on older OS versions too...
I'll report back later in the day...
I'll report back later in the day...
Smart albums
In addition to list view, another thing you may find helpful is smart albums. For instance, you could create a smart album for a particular camera or lens that you may have. Also, and more to the point of your question, you could create smart albums for a particular focal length, or for a range of focal lengths. If you have a lot of photographs, this may be the quickest way of assessing what your shooting tendencies are. Naturally, this also works for aperture, shutter speed, and anything else captured in your exif data.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
DCBass
In addition to list view, another thing you may find helpful is smart albums. For instance, you could create a smart album for a particular camera or lens that you may have. Also, and more to the point of your question, you could create smart albums for a particular focal length, or for a range of focal lengths. If you have a lot of photographs, this may be the quickest way of assessing what your shooting tendencies are. Naturally, this also works for aperture, shutter speed, and anything else captured in your exif data.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
DCBass
Still a few loose ends to tie up and some features to add (like saving as csv which would actually make it useful) but I've learnt a lot about the new AppleScriptObjC thing in 10.6.
It's still a little slow, the penalty of AppleScript I think. Anyway I attach a screenshot. The app will come in the next couple of days (and the project if anyone wants the source too)
It's still a little slow, the penalty of AppleScript I think. Anyway I attach a screenshot. The app will come in the next couple of days (and the project if anyone wants the source too)
Attachments
You could download the Lightroom 3 Beta (free), import your photos into it, then use the very simple 'smart collections' feature to immediately count the lens usage data.
Just a thought!
Just a thought!
This and the smart albums suggestion for Aperture work well if you know all the values, but what if you don't. Running my stats collector over my Aperture library showed that I have quite a lot of images (from other people cameras/point and shoots etc) with off aperture and focal lengths. How would this deal with that?
Good point. I think the EXIF field is specifically 'lens' not 'focal length' - so either this isn't a problem, or the results aren't useful - depending on your point of view!
I was tying it back to the OPs original question: which focal lengths and apertures did he/she use most. To find that out you need to be able to extract counts for each value in each of those fields. Which is what my AppleScriptObjC app does. If I'm not in the pub later I'll be working on it some more tonight...
If anyone is interested the app I wrote to extract stats from Aperture can now be downloaded from this thread...
Great! Will give it a try in the morning (already past midnight here...) and report on how it works later!