Aperture

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My Five Favorite New Features in Aperture 3.0

Posted by scottbourne on May 2, 2010
Posted in: Tips. Tagged: , .

Copyright Scott Bourne 1998 - All Rights Reserved

I’ve had several weeks to get to know Aperture 3.0. The latest updates really brought the software to a point where I finally feel like I can rely on it. It’s still not perfect, but it’s at the point that I no longer worry about it.

Accordingly, I’ve been able to delve deeper into the program and here are my top five favorite new features in Aperture 3.0.3

1. Support for Video

I am a big believer in multi-media. I see the application of video in settings where still photography used to rule as part of the new normal. With hybrid DSLRs being so popular, it was time for Aperture to support video. I believe Apple will continue to tweak this feature, but it’s a good start. You can now import, rate and scrub video. You can even trim your clips and add audio. While it’s not really designed this way, you could actually make a full-on movie within Aperture or export to Final Cut Pro. You can also send video to Photoshop for tweaking.

2. Exportable Slide Shows

Finally. I’ll never forget the first time I showed Aperture directly to a client. It was a client who I met back in the days when I shot weddings. She had commissioned me to shoot some portraits of her children. I brought her to the sales room where I had an Apple 30″ Cinema Display set up running a quick and dirty little slideshow I’d built in Aperture 1.X. I used some royalty-free music and I have to say, it turned out pretty well. The client loved it. I pushed all her buttons. She was laughing and crying all at the same time while we were discussing an album of the images. She then asked, “Can I buy the slide show too?” I saw dollar signs and said, “Of course – no problem. We’ll work up a price for you.” OOOOOOPS – problem. There was no way to export the slide show!!! Now you can export the slide show as a movie with the click of a button. Thank you Apple.

3. Show Focus Points

This feature isn’t quite as important to me as a photographer as it is as a photography teacher. When you look at a shot that’s slightly out of focus, it’s sometimes hard to tell what the photographer was aiming at. As someone who critiques and judges lots of photos, I use this feature to find out where the focus point was in relationship to the subject. Just hit OPTION-F to turn this feature on. Try it.

4. Adjustment Presets

When I started exploring Lightroom 2.X, I decided that one of its great advantages over Aperture was it’s ability to use presets. Now the scales are balanced. Aperture now supports fully editable, customizable presets. You can make your own presets, download other photographers’ presets, create your own preset menus. It’s all very powerful and makes it possible to get in and out of Aperture in just a minute or two if your shot starts out right.

5. Skin Smoothing Quick Brush

I simply can’t believe how well this tool works. It eliminates most of the reason I used to round trip to Photoshop. Apple has managed to make this tool both extremely powerful and at the same time, terribly easy to use. That’s a killer combination. You have fully selective control over the process.

Aperture has matured quite nicely. I am back to using it as my primary image editing, selecting and processing tool. I am still using Lightroom because I think it has some nifty neat features too. But I have to admit that I am simply more comfortable with the Apple interface and I prefer managed libraries. I realize that makes me a bit of an odd duck, but hey – what else is new?

I’m teaching a free course in Aperture 3.0X at CreativeLive.com starting this month.

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This post sponsored by the Digital SLR Store

Aperture 3.0.2 – FINALLY Finally Ready For Prime Time

Posted by scottbourne on March 27, 2010
Posted in: Reviews. Tagged: .

Copyright Scott Bourne 1999 - All Rights Reserved

A short time ago, Apple released the much-anticipated update to Aperture 2.0. It has a long list of admirable features, but the initial release was short on performance. I wrote my initial review about Aperture 3 on Photofocus here.

Aperture 3.0 was flat-out buggy and I believe Apple knew it. Very shortly after the release of 3.0, Apple released  3.0.1 which was a minor bug fix that helped somewhat. But the substantive fixes and changes that needed to be made weren’t made until version 3.0.2 released earlier this week.

The changes were successful and impact the big problem areas. The program is now much more stable. Gone are the intermittent crashes and freezes I experienced with the 3.0 update. Libraries import more smoothly. Issues like improper scrolling behavior were fixed. Best of all, the program now delivers some of the previously-promised speed increases that I never experienced before the 3.0.2 update.

A complete list of updates and bug fixes can be found here.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2518

There are still a few minor issues. We’re still waiting for most of the third party plug-ins to be 64-bit compatible. And Faces and Places work much better than they did in 3.0, but are still not quite up to par.

Overall, I think Aperture 3.0 has in many ways caught up to Lightroom. Now Adobe has answered with Lightroom 3 Beta II. This keeps the chase alive. When Adobe finally finishes Lightroom 3.0, and takes it out of BETA, I’ll do a blow-by-blow review of the two looking at the pluses and minuses of each program.

For now I am comfortable with Aperture 3.0.2, and am using it with success. I am also using Lightroom 2.0. I have to admit to being more comfortable with the Aperture interface. While I spent most of the last six months using Lightroom, I’ll probably spend most of the next six months using the new Aperture. I’m going to be teaching Aperture again and since Aperture is out of beta (my words) I want to concentrate on it for now.

I’ll continue to report my progress with the new Aperture if anything major pops up and I’ll be offering some tips here in the coming months on how to get the most out of the program.

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This post sponsored by the Digital SLR Store

How to Rebuild Your Aperture Photo Library

Posted by scottbourne on February 27, 2010
Posted in: Tips. Tagged: .

Copyright Scott Bourne 2010 - All Rights Reserved

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about this but I recently received a question for the podcast that might be answered here on Photofocus.com.

If you use Aperture (II or III) and you have a large library or make lots and lots of changes to even a small library, the Aperture library can bog down or even become unstable.

This has something to do with the database and can lead to symptoms like pictures not showing up or slow scrolling to occasional thumbnail rendering and overall slower performance. I personally also believe it’s tied to a memory leak in the program. In any event, when this happens, rebuilding the Library is often the fix.

Before you rebuild your Library, back up everything to your Vault. Then, quit Aperture. Press and hold Option + Command and launch Aperture by double clicking on the application icon. Follow the prompts to start the rebuild.

It will take some time for the rebuild to be complete. I have my images stored in multiple Libraries of 10,000 image. Rebuild time is about 45 minutes on average.

At the end of the process, you should see snappier performance. This can also be a fix if things are just going haywire without reason.

When you are confident that you haven’t lost any images, back up this newly-rebuilt Library to your Vault and you’re finished.

I recommend that you do this every three months or so and more often if you are a heavy Aperture user or have very large Libraries.

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This post sponsored by the Digital SLR Store

Stabilizing Aperture 3.0

Posted by scottbourne on February 24, 2010
Posted in: Tips. Tagged: .

I’ve already expressed my frustration at crash-prone Aperture 3.0. Since I want to be able to fully test the program I am still working with it, although with a small sample library – not with my actual serious photography.

I’ve found a way to stabilize Aperture 3.0 – at least on my system. By deleting my Aperture Preferences I started to see considerably fewer crashes. The Aperture plist is found in your User > Library > Preferences > com.apple.Aperture.plist.

If you want to give this a try, open Aperture and make a note of your preferences. They will all be reset once you do this, so be sure you can remember or recreate the current prefs.

Quit Aperture, delete the old plist and restart Aperture. This will clear out your old preferences and hopefully and performance bugs in Aperture 3.0.

In my tests, which have not been extensive, the program is significantly less crash-prone after I trashed the plist. The program is still a bit jiggy here and there, but at least the regular crashes seemed to have been dramatically reduced. I’ve only had one crash since I trashed the plist.

NOTE: Take this action at your own risk. While I can’t imagine it causing anyone any problems, I’m not responsible if it does. For me, it’s been pretty smooth sailing since.

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This post sponsored by Ray Flash – Ring Flash Adapter

Aperture 3.0 – Very Cool But NOT Ready For Prime Time

Posted by scottbourne on February 17, 2010
Posted in: Opinion, Reviews. Tagged: .

Copyright Scott Bourne 2010 - All Rights Reserved

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you know that I was one of the early proponents of Aperture. In fact, it would have been safe to call me an Aperture “fanboy.” When it first launched, it was far from perfect, but I immediately saw the potential of the program and decided to embrace it anyway.

I co-taught the very first public workshop on Aperture a few days after it launched at MacWorld with Derrick Story. I taught it again the next year as well. I became one of the first Aperture T3 (Train the Trainer) Apple certified instructors. I established the first Aperture blog and podcast which I later rolled into work I did for the O’Reilly Digital Media Blog. I went on to record two Aperture training titles for lynda.com and did the technical edit on two Aperture books. In other words, I have a long history with the program and know a thing or two about it.

So it was with great anticipation that I got my hands on Aperture 3.0. It had been a very long time between Aperture 2.x and 3.0. In fact, many in the photography community moved on to Lightroom thinking Apple had abandoned Aperture.

I myself got tired of their silly secrecy policy and ADDED Lightroom 2x to my arsenal. I also downloaded Lightroom 3.0 beta and played with it.

Regardless of which program I land on permanently, I feel the need to know them both since the Photofocus audience asks lots of questions about both.

I used Aperture 3.0 for a few hours and wrote a first glance post here – http://photofocus.com/2010/02/10/aperture-3-0-first-glance/.

Since then, I’ve invested about 12 hours into Aperture 3.0. I’ve given it a more complete shakedown and tested nearly every aspect of it. I have some conclusions – the good, the bad and the downright ugly.

The Good

Lots of new features. Lots of them. 200 to be exact. Some more powerful and important than others but believe me, it’s a major upgrade. My favorite upgrade is the ability to do more powerful slide shows and then export them. I’ve been crying for this feature in Aperture forever. I even met with the Aperture design team in Cupertino one day and got to layout my want list. This was at the top. I also love being able to merge Libraries, look at the video I import, use presets, make spot adjustments with brushes, etc. If all the features in Aperture work as advertised, it is very conceivable that it could replace the need for Photoshop for many photographers. I’ve never said that before. I’ve ALWAYS said the two programs compliment each other. Not any more. If Aperture 3.0 works as advertised, many of you will not need Photoshop. I sense a further chill in the Adobe and Apple relationship.

The Bad

While Apple thought of many things, the one place they should have concentrated their efforts better is speed. The program does indeed offer faster thumbnails. But EVERYTHING else is as slow or slower than it was before. Aperture 3.0 was a chance to clean up the legacy code and to find workarounds for the heavy dependancy on super fast GPU chips (Graphics Processing Unit.) That didn’t happen. Even on the most expensive, souped up laptop Apple sells, I get a spinning beach ball or the “processing” icon for far too long.

And then there’s the 64-bit problem. New feature – Aperture supports 64-bit computing. YAY! About time! BUT…..(there’s always a but) if you use plug-ins like Nik, Topaz, etc., you have to stop, relaunch in 32-bit mode and move on. AGAIN, because of Apple’s Byzantine marketing and PR policies and their manic desire for secrecy at all cost, they didn’t bother to work with their partners to provide an SDK that would have allowed 64-bit plug-ins to ship at the same time Aperture launched. This leaves the plug-in makers scrambling AFTER the fact to re-write their software to take full advantage of Aperture’s new speed. Despite the fact that every other software company on the planet considers this a standard practice, Apple won’t do it and the users are the ones who get screwed in the end.

The Ugly

Oh yeah it gets worse – I’m averaging one total Aperture crash every 90 minutes. If I were a Windows user I’d expect this sort of thing – (yeah I admit that last comment was flame bait but I couldn’t help myself) – but not on a Mac. I am afraid that Apple has taken Guy Kawasaki’s advice to “ship crap” far too literally.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Aperture 3.0 has a memory leak. The message “Startup Disk Full” started appearing out of nowhere, even though I had 78 gigs of free HD space on my laptop.

And don’t even get me started on Faces and Places. These are two new super cool features bolted onto Aperture from iPhoto and they just plain and simple are completely buggy for me and most users I talked with.

What makes this particularly ugly is that Apple is mum on the problems. They offer us no guidance or advice. We’re just supposed to suffer and wait for the expected update. Will it come today, next month, a year from now? “Apple doesn’t comment on future products or updates,” says the official PR person – who by the way looks a whole lot like one of the monitors in the movie “1984.” I’m just saying…

CONCLUSION

Aperture 3.0 offers some very, very cool new features. Once the program is stable, I have no doubt that it will be able to quite nicely compete with Lightroom 3.0 – at least based on what we’re seeing in the current Lightroom 3.0 beta. The ability to use presets, slideshows you can export, the editing brushes, the ability to have much better control over photo libraries and the support for video are just a few of my favorite new features. And Lightroom still (even in 3.0) doesn’t have a book feature while Aperture does. But because of Apple’s mindless, self-destructive and downright unhelpful commitment to secrecy above sanity, I can’t right now treat the program as anything other than a beta. And I am NOT going to risk my livelihood (i.e. my photo library) on a beta. I won’t trust Lightroom 3.0 to manage my photos because Adobe has had the courage to label it a beta. And I won’t trust Aperture 3.0 to manage my photos – regardless of Apple’s failure to acknowledge it’s nothing more than a beta too.

I am rooting for Apple and Aperture despite the fact that I find the company’s policies surrounding secrecy to be frustrating and downright counterproductive – at least in this case. If for no other reason than we need Aperture to keep Adobe Lightroom honest, we should all hope it succeeds. But for now, I can’t advise serious photographers to trust Aperture 3.0. I’ll continue to explore it with a small demo Library to learn the new features – but when it comes to the real world, I’ll wait for the 3.01.

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This post sponsored by the Digital SLR Store

Aperture 3.0 First Glance

Posted by scottbourne on February 10, 2010
Posted in: Reviews. Tagged: .


Apple finally took the wraps off Aperture 3.0. The application appears to have caught up to Lightroom 2X and then some. But until Adobe freezes the LR3 beta, we can’t know how the two programs stack up head-to-head.

Some important new features in Aperture 3.0 include:

a. Presets (including on import)
This is one of the things I really found I liked about Lightroom. Presets are fun, cool and time-saving. Glad to see Aperture 3.0 finally has them.
b. Easier import and more import options
c. Backup on import
d. Faster thumbnails on import – This works as advertised
e. Color labels
f. Merge and Sync Libraries
This one is huge – I’ve been wanting this since Aperture 1.0. If you work with many Libraries as I do, this can be a real neat option
g. Fast Library Switching
Another feature I’ve wanted – again because I use multiple Libraries. This should make it easier and faster
h. Better Library/database maintenance options
i. From iPhoto Faces/Places – very cool
j. Non-destructive brushes – Finally selective adjustment in Aperture
k. New curves tool
l. Web publishing to Facebook or Flickr
m. Video support – HUGE with fusion making waves in the industry the ability to do ANYTHING with video in Aperture is a big deal
n. Slideshows vastly improved – yes! Finally you can export and share an Aperture slide show and you can add audio, text and video. Aperture 3.0 also offers six professionally-designed themes.
o. Printing – lots more printing options including books. I’m impressed to see that Apple worked out deals with companies like GraphiStudio. These folks make some really high-end stuff. Should be a boon to wedding and portrait shooters. There are also cool new printing presets.
p. 64-Bit support – huge if you have a beefy machine
q. New project view lets you organize and view projects more efficiently
r. AND last but not least – Aperture FINALLY supports Panasonic’s RAW format on the LX3!!!

There’s a partial laundry list. Apple claims there are 200 changes to Aperture 3. This list represents some of the changes I consider important.

About performance…

There’s no doubt that on my test machine: (Intel Core 2 Duo – 2.93 GHz – 8 GB Memory) Aperture builds the previews MUCH more quickly. But I see no additional enhancements to performance – so far. The program still takes a while to process images and while you can technically work on your photos while this happens, it only took me 30 seconds to crash Aperture 3.0. All I did was try to see a Full Page View of an image that was processing.

Clearly, those hoping to find Aperture noticeably faster will find little to cheer about. The program is also still a bit buggy for my taste. I had one other random crash. I expect these problems to quickly be sorted out.

All-in-all it looks like Apple has caught up to Lightroom and perhaps surpassed it in some ways. Aperture 3.0 is a major update. It was a long wait between Aperture 2.0 and Aperture 3.0 and hopefully Apple won’t take so long between this and the next update. I will continue to use both Lightroom and Aperture, but for me, the jury is still out. I am a little worried about the crashes I experienced and I may wait for 3.01 before I try doing any serious work with Aperture 3.0.

As soon as Adobe announces the gold version of Lightroom 3, I’ll do a side-by-side comparison.

Aperture 3.0 retails for $199, and existing Aperture users can upgrade for $99. Visit Apple for more information.

Transferring Projects From Aperture to Lightroom

Posted by scottbourne on October 13, 2009
Posted in: Technique & Tutorials. Tagged: , .

desktop

This question came in last week from Nicholas Kitto in Hong Kong:

“One thing that has tended to hold me back from trying Lightroom is the thought of transferring my numerous projects over to Lightroom. However, I see that you are undertaking this task. Thus, when you have the time, I (and many others no doubt) would be very interested in the approach you use.”

Thanks for the question Nicholas. I have received the same question from others as you suspected and it seems like the easiest way to address it is in a blog post.

As I stated in my post “Why I’ve Started Using Lightroom Too” I am not abandoning Aperture. I am simply ADDING Lightroom to my workflow. Accordingly, I want to keep my Aperture Projects intact.

Before I get into this too far there are a couple of things you should know. First I have several photo libraries totaling nearly 16TB so my solutions may be a bit extreme. Secondly, I am a freak about backups and redundancy so I am taking steps some might consider unnecessary. Third, I use Aperture in a managed file not a referenced file structure. So all my photos stored in Aperture are stored in Aperture Library files. I have multiple Aperture Library files since I have so many photos. Large Aperture databases don’t operate as efficiently as small ones so I have several smaller libraries.

My workflow may differ from yours in the following way. I am using Lightroom exclusively for my NEW projects. (Unless I want to print a book and in that case I will export my LR Catalog to an Aperture Project for the purpose of making the book.)

Since my new photo shoots won’t make it into Aperture I don’t have to worry about converting them. As for my legacy files, here’s what I am doing.

I have set up a Promise VTrak E-Class 16x SATA RAID Subsystem with 16TB of storage. (You can substitute any drive of sufficient size for your photos here.) I am using this as my main photo library. I am exporting each Aperture Project from Aperture to the Promise. I am also, as a matter of convenience and redundancy, exporting each Project’s Master Files AND each project’s Versions to the Promise. For example, if I have a project entitled “Raptors,” I’ll have THREE folders on the Promise. One for the exported Aperture Project, one for the exported Aperture Masters and one for the exported Aperture Versions. I will then fire up Lightroom and create a Lightroom Catalog in the same place and import the Aperture Versions into Lightroom. Since most of these are legacy jobs, and I won’t be editing or working on them in the future other than to grab photos from them when a client places an order, I have decided NOT to import ALL the Master images into Lightroom. I am only importing the “keepers” and salable stuff or the stuff that I somehow adjusted in Aperture. If I should ever need to get at the old original files, I can simply open up the Masters.

So now – for each Aperture Project there are FOUR folders. The aforementioned three, plus the new Lightroom Catalog Folder.

I am repeating this process for every Aperture Project. It is tedious and time consuming but it is also the safest, most thorough way I can think of to do it. It also provides me with the option of always using these files in either Aperture or Lightroom.

As I create the new set of four folders on the Promise, I also immediately create a backup on a 4TB Drobo. Since all of my Drobos are full, I am experimenting with other storage solutions and may decide to bite the bullet and simply purchase another Promise system. Presently, at $15k each, that’s not my favorite or first choice, but it may be the way I end up going if I run out of drive space.

I am sure someone smarter than me can come up with a better plan, but I am sort of committed to this one because it offers me the most flexibility and security. I can access my photos from either Aperture or Lightroom and they are all backed up.

The one legitimate question this might raise for some people is this: Why create a separate Lightroom Catalog for each exported Aperture Project? That’s simple. Lightroom, like Aperture, tends to bog down when its Catalogs are very large. Database pointers get screwed up and the integrity of the Catalog becomes jeopardized. Keeping all the Projects in separate Catalogs guarantees the best Lightroom performance and data security all at once. The negative of course is that you can’t just call up one big catalog and see all your photos at once. Unfortunately, with a photo collection as large as mine, that will never seem practical, so my method works for me. I have good discipline about naming jobs/projects in a way that they are easy to find and with them all living in one place – i.e., on the Promise VTrak, they are indeed easier to find than you might think.

I hope this clears up your question Nicholas. For those of you who are working on the same problem, feel free to e-mail me your suggested solutions to photofocus@me.com.

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This post sponsored by the Digital SLR Store