Features

Although you have probably never launched it, Image Capture (tucked away inside your Applications folder) is one of the most useful applications on your Mac. At its simplest, it is a tool for downloading media from cameras or their memory cards. In this sense, it is similar to iPhoto, but it has a slightly different purpose, and there are specific instances when you would use each.

In particular, while Image Capture naturally lacks the image organisation of iPhoto, it offers more flexibility for downloading media from your camera. Where iPhoto can only grab pictures,

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Image Capture can download movies and audio clips, too, and as an encore will file them away in the relevant folders in your home directory. If you do not want to download all the media from your camera, Image Capture offers you a preview of all the items stored on it, and allows you to download only those items you select, which is great if you have a huge memory card. It can also apply processes to images once they are downloaded; building a slideshow or web page, or cropping them to fit to standard 6 x 4in format, for example.

Image Capture has another trick up its sleeve. It can make the media stored on a connected camera or memory card available to other local computers, or even over the Internet, so you can share a library of media for free. As if that wasn't enough, it can even act as a kind of webcam software, broadcasting the images from compatible cameras on the web. If you need a higher-resolution copy of the view, you can instruct the camera to take a picture that you can then download.

In this masterclass, we will show you how to use the basics of Image Capture as well as explore some of its more advanced sharing features.