Back in February I wrote a post about my initial experiences with the Aperture SDK. At that point I had accomplished the basics. I downloaded and installed the SDK, I read through the template, and after editing a few of the template’s place holders I had built a plugin. Of course the plugin did nothing more than send exported images to my desktop, but it worked.
Well, since then I have been doing my homework. A fellow blogger by the name of Bagelturf has written up a really nice series of posts detailing his development of his Random Wok plugin, and I have been following along like a devoted disciple.
Recently, I also posted a link to a great conversation with Fraser Spiers of Connected Flow. He was interviewed on the Late Night Cocoa Podcast, and his talk goes into great detail about the SDK, and how he built his FlickrExport Plugin.
With all this going on I have really been eager to start a project of my own. So for the next few weeks (or perhaps more) I will be blogging the experience of making an Aperture plugin. I will probably not go too far into detail about the coding, as I don’t really want to repeat what Bagelturf has already done, but I will keep you posted as to my progress and pitfalls.
The Plugin:
The idea for this project came to me when I was playing with Aperture’s Email function. Aperture has a built in feature where the user can click a button to send an image as an email attachment. I use it all the time! In Aperture’s preferences you can designate which email application you would like to use from a list and you can also set your desired Export Preset.
Once you have set up your preferences all you need to do is select a picture and click the email icon in your toolbar. Aperture automatically generates a new mail message with the pictures attached.
This feature is really nice for sending quick pictures to my friends, but I wanted more. I still have a small handful of clients who insist on me delivering images to them via email. Usually I send them full resolution JPEGs, which are about 1 meg a piece, and so I send the images in separate emails so as not to clog up their clients inboxes.
Up until now I have been using PhotoMechanic to send images by email. PhotoMechanic has a really nice feature where you can select any number of images and send each picture in a separate email. It has a number of other useful options, which you can set at the time of export. So, I wanted to create an Aperture plugin that basically does the same thing.
Here is what I would like the Aperture email plugin to do:
- Option to send images in separate emails
- Ability to select export and naming presets at time of sending
- Option to either review each email or send automatically
- Integration with Apple’s Address Book
- Ability to send Master image files
Well, that is about it for now. The nice thing about the plugin is that much of the work is already done. I can take advantage of the Aperture Export and File Naming Presets without having to write any code because they are part of the API and built into the plugin.
Next time I will talk about the first steps, the basic design and layout of the interface, and how I am going to talk to my email program. The truth is I have already done quite a bit of work on this plugin, so it is very likely that you will see a downloadable release available on this site in the not too distant future. But, I will continue this series to chronicle my efforts, and of course, if you have any thoughts you would like to share, or added feature ideas, please let me know in the comments!
- Developing an Aperture Plugin - Part 1
- Developing an Aperture Plugin - Part 2
- Developing an Aperture Plugin - Part 3
- Developing an Aperture Plugin - Part 4
This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Email, Email Pro, Plugins, Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
