Image Capture needs a little love

If you're reading this on your Mac – and I hope you are – I want you to open up your Applications folder right now.
Go ahead. I'll wait.

Ok, now scroll down until you see something called Image Capture. I know what you're thinking.. "But I don't have any application called Image Capture." Yeah you do. And it wasn't something you grabbed off Versiontracker or leeched off some warez site. It's been there since your Mac came out of the box and you've been ignoring it this whole time. Shame on you.

Image Capture is one of the most underused and overlooked Mac applications Apple's ever given us for free (if you don't count the cost of the operating system).

I'm here to tell you that Image Capture is a real gem with a wealth of wicked-cool features you probably didn't even know about.

Did you know that Image Capture will let you selectively download images and video clips from your camera or memory card? And then it can send the files you select to iPhoto or another compatible app or just save them into a folder for you. Image Capture is no one-trick pony, though. It can also crop your images, build slideshows and create simple web pages to show off your pics.

As if that wasn't enough, Image Capture knows how to share. You can let others browse, download,
and delete images from your digital camera via a web browser over Rendezvous or over the internet, and
you can even share a scanner. Image how useful that can be.

But here's what I think is the coolest feature: Image Capture's Remote Monitor. Apple has given you free, barebones webcam software. With a supported digital camera, you can use Remote Monitor to snap a picture every 60 seconds and those pictures can be shared over the web once you have the web sharing preference enabled.

I don't know why Apple doesn't promote these features more, but I thought you should know about them. I suspect Apple had additional plans for Image Capture and dropped them at the last minute but it already does plenty and now that you know, I hope you'll take Image Capture for a spin yourself.