Aperture and Google+ Sharing
Update
I've posted an update on Aperture and Google+ sharing. Now working with Safari. Nicer video showing the feature, too.
I'm not much of a social media person (insert snide comment about me being an old curmudgeon here). But I have found that Google+ is a great place to connect with other photographers. I've learned a bunch about composing and creating good photos. And hopefully some of that is starting to show :) And so I share photos on Google+ on a regular basis.
One thing I don't like about Google+ is the "Photos From Posts" free-for-all dumping ground where everything winds up. I prefer to keep my albums organized and share from there. But then you get the double-entry, which I hate. I go to the trouble to organize my albums, shared a photo from one, and it gets stuffed in the "Photos From Posts" album too. Groan.
Trey Ratcliff shared his method for posting photos to Google+ and avoiding the double entry. As the interface on Google+ has changed, the steps are a little different, but the spirit is the same. Add a photo to an existing album and share immediately.
So what does this have to do with Aperture? I 'm getting there....
I've started using Aperture previews to post to Google+. The process is simple. Find the photo you want to share in Aperture, drag-and-drop it into Google+, and share. As part of uploading the new photo, an existing album can be selected. And no double post! Here's a short video (sorry, no sound) on the process.
When sharing using the Aperture preview, you do need to consider the size of the preview. Use the Preview pane in Preferences to control this:
As a hobbyist, I don't concern myself as much with full resolution pictures and sharing. You may. For an in-depth explanation of Aperture previews, and suggestions on how to manage them, read the previews article on ApertureExpert.
Lastly, note that location information is always shared when dragging a preview. I've tried turning off location in the Export pane of Aperture Preferences, and it had no effect when dragging a preview. If you're sharing something you would prefer to keep the location of hidden, don't use this method.
A shortcoming is that the drag-and-drop feature in Google+ doesn't work with Safari. Using Firefox, it works great. I don't know about Chrome. Another is you can't do operations like resizing or adding watermarks that can be done using the Picasa plugin for Aperture.
