Hey Joseph.

I wasn’t sure where to post this so I’ll just stick it here and let you decide if it needs to be moved somewhere else.

I started teaching myself AppleScript from free online tutorials a few weeks ago, and I just want to let you guys know that there is world of possibilities in there. AppleScript is sooo easy to learn, even from total scratch (which was my case) and if I’d known it was this easy, i would’ve started a lot sooner.

So far I’ve written two small scripts for Aperture 3.

The first runs automatically after every import session. It checks if any of the imported images were shot using the Canon EF-S 10-22mm lens. Those that are then get an image adjustment preset applied to correct Chromatic Aberration. The preset is just one I made myself that I found works well with 95% of my images with that lens. It could be any metadata that triggered any preset to be applied.

on ImportActionForVersions(input)
tell application “Aperture”
tell library 1
set no_adj to 0
repeat with i from 1 to count of input
tell (item i of input)
if value of EXIF tag “LensModel” is “EF-S10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM” then
apply image adjustment (item i of input) preset “Canon 10-22mm CA fix”
set no_adj to no_adj + 1
end if
end tell
end repeat
display dialog (no_adj as string) & ” images adjusted.”
end tell
end tell
end ImportActionForVersions

The other script is longer so I won’t paste it here unless someone asks me to. I wrote it basically to solve a dilemma I have each time I decide which images to reject and delete. Sometimes I wish there was a way to convert a master RAW image to JPEG in stead of deleting it. I know RAW is God and all, but with some images I don’t mind butchering a few bits off to save disk space. Unfortunately Aperture wouldn’t let me, so I had to make it.

This is what the script does: It exports the current selection using “JPEG - Original Size” to a temporary folder and imports those back into their original projects as new masters. The original images get a rating of “rejected” and the new jpegs get a keyword “Converted using…”. That’s it. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that it could be done way more easily but it felt really good to make Aperture understand what I wanted.

Thanks for a great site!
Morten