Aperture Blogs
Without doubt, the most welcomed features of Aperture 2.0 are several new image adjustment features included in the program You can almost close your eyes and point them out because they’re so clearly evident. While I greatly welcome the new Lightroom-like features such as vignetting and vibrancy, when I tried out the little feature called Definition, all I could say was, sweeeet.
We all know that both Aperture and Lightroom basically make adjustments to the entire image when they are applied, but with Aperture 2.0, Apple has included Definition as a way of adding local contrast when adjusting an image. Basically it seems to add more contrast to a Contrast adjustment. While the latter affects the entire image, the Definition adjustment affects more local areas, helping to further get rid of haze in the photo.
You can see the changes when applied, but sometimes using the Loupe tool will help you see the changes even better.
Before Definition adjustment:
After Definition adjustment
When I read that Aperture 2.0 had been released today, I couldn’t resist setting aside responsibilities today so that I could get my hands on the updated version. After spending a couple of hours with 2.0, I can honestly that despite its “over 100 dramatic, new features” there’s little or no learning curve to getting up and running with the updated program.
If you’re avid Apple use, and if you have been using a previous version of Aperture for a while, then you’ll feel right at home with 2.0. However, if you need to know more about the new features, such as setting up your camera for tethered shooting or customizing keyboard shortcuts for Aperture, there’s no better place to look than Apple’s very own resource page of video tutorials.
Rarely have I seen a software program receive such a wealth of audiovisual tutorial support, for free! With these tutorials available on Apple’s site, you can always have access to them as you learn about the new features. While these tutorials may not take the place of a good manual book on the program, they make for a very thorough introduction.
I am in Chicago this week, doing a photo shoot for the campaign of Fusion. Fusion is a new yoga school partly owned and operated by my good friend, a yoga master and instructor, Juanita Monaghan. The past two months, I’ve been traveling and I’ve been getting valuable first-hand education on what it actually feels like to be mostly doing on-location pictorials.
Before this constant traveling, and for the past 15 years, I’ve been shooting almost exclusively inside the comfortably controlled confines of a photo studio. Sure I’ve done quite a number of location shoots in the past, but not on a very regular basis (meaning, not all the time). Shooting on location almost all of the time is therefore a somewhat new experience for me and I’m in the process of getting used to it. I am a fish out of the water, so to speak, but hopefully, not for long.
I am guessing that many if not most photographers who are using Aperture are shooters whose work and passion takes them to interesting locations both far and near. These are photographers who may be shooting in some of the most exciting places but maybe under unpredictable conditions. They may be constantly traveling, alone or with assistants, from one place to another, lugging lots of stuff and moving about, while at the same time, keeping in mind the process of consistently producing required output on-the-go and certainly keeping deadlines.
While veteran location shooters may have the on-the-go Aperture workflow down pat, I’m figuring out how it can work for me. Here’s how I’m doing it:
1. All my equipment are stashed in a single backpack: a D2Xs camera body with 6 Nikkor lenses and a Lensbaby 3G , and, an overly accessorized 17? MacBook Pro with an Epson P-5000, and a few other stuff, including an iPhone.
2. After the shoot, or even while shooting, I load all RAW image files into the Epson P-5000. It seems easier and more convenient to load the photos to a handy and compact portable storage device than into a laptop while on the go.
3. Meanwhile, on my MacBook Pro, I have Aperture installed and waiting with an empty Library.
4. The soonest that I am able, I connect the Epson P-5000 to the MacBook Pro, and reference all the shots in Aperture. I keep lots of other stuff on my laptop so I may not have enough space to create a managed Library in Aperture. Also, it seems that referencing the images stored in an external drive attached to the laptop seems faster.
5. First thing I do once the images are referenced in Aperture is that I export the masters out of Aperture, or and burn them into DVDS, and stash these away as a backup.
6. And then I just go ahead and start working on the new shots inside Aperture (with the P-5000 hooked up when necessary).
7. At whatever stage I may be in the workflow in my laptop’s Aperture, when I reach my home studio, I export the Project (with Consolidate Images checked) out of my laptop, and then import it into my MacPro’s Aperture, where I then continue working. I also do a little housekeeping at this stage, with all unnecessary and secondary backups and copies are judiciously deleted to conserve space and to avoid confusion.
8. The DVDs I burned as a backup on location undergoes a quick check and then filed and referenced away.
9. Once I’m done with the Project, I export the final Project, burn in Toast spanning multiple discs, label, reference and stash away.
This simple workflow seems to work for me, and I’m enjoying the location-to-studio workflow in Aperture. Being new to “being always on-the-go,” I am meeting photography challenges that others may have already solved ahead of me. The straightforward workflow I outlined above, although I might need to refine it a bit more, helps me concentrate on the images and meet my deadlines. I’m just glad to be able to do this with Aperture as one of my main workflow tools, on the road and in the studio.
Every software program that I’m familiar with includes some automatic adjustments, and without fail, until recently, I’ve been opposed to using them. The reason is that any auto adjustment is a software engineer’s best guess of what adjustments usually work for most images with similar characteristics. I prefer to make adjustments that are image specific. I do use batch processing via the Lift and Stamp tool when images have been shot under similar lighting conditions. But even when taking advantage of the Lift and Stamp tools, I often tweak the adjustments for individual images. So until recently I could accurately claim to never use auto adjustments. But you’ve heard the old adage, “Never say never!”
Not long ago I was experimenting with some underwater photography. I’m new to this type photography and left my camera set on Auto White balance. (OK, some of you are saying, “See, you do use auto adjustments,” and perhaps you’re right. But that’s an in camera setting not a software setting.) As is often the case with underwater shots, there was a strong cyan/blue cast to the images. I tried adjusting the Temperature slider in Aperture but that wasn’t enough and there isn’t a red/cyan white balance slider. I also tried increasing the red saturation and decreasing the cyan saturation, which improved the image somewhat, but the cyan cast was still present. Out of curiosity ( I clicked the Auto Levels buttons that are under the histogram in the Adjustment HUD. And to my surprise the colorcast was gone!
Over the last few months I’ve been working on a new book, Digital Photography Companion, and I’ve had to cull hundreds of pictures (from a catalog of thousands) for possible inclusion in the project. In the past, this was an agonizing endeavor. Pictures and various iterations of them spread all over the place, difficult to find, hard to organize.
For Digital Photography Companion, it’s an entirely different universe. My Aperture library contains everything I’ve shot for the last two years (except for photos captured with the Canon G9), and the images are totally organized and accessible. I’m building preview catalogs for my publishing team, outputting Jpegs for sample designs, and will soon be exporting high resolution Tiffs for CMYK conversion in Photoshop. (I know what you’re thinking… wouldn’t it be nice to output CMYK directly from Aperture. Answer: yes it would be lovely.)
So the last two years I’ve spent gleefully organizing my images in Aperture is now paying off handsomely. I’m actually enjoying the photo editing process instead of dreading it. If I could only go end to end and output in CMYK, it would be a total victory. Ah, maybe someday. But for now, I have to say that my photography workflow has made a giant step forward. And I feel like my return on investment is excellent.
In my latest Digital Story podcast, I talk about this process. You might want to tune in if you have a hankering for more.for more infomation check on this website down.
