Aperture Tricks

When you have two or more images visible in the viewer and you have used 'Zoom to Actual Size' all images will display at 100%.

This seems to be true in every view mode. This also works with Aperture Trick #9; zooming all visible images to 100% based on whichever image has the cursor over it.

Holding down space allows you to drag around the zoomed image, but if you hold shift and space together, all zoomed images will drag.

This is ideal for comparing point of focus across multiple images.

Thanks Doug Young!

If you have an Aperture Trick, share it by sending your trick to aperturetricks at aol.com.

If you're a regular visitor to Aperture Tricks, you may have noticed our new design. We had some readability complaints with our old design and were using some IE hacks that were causing some browser problems so we opted for this more understated approach to solve both problems.

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Also, don't forget about our free Lensbaby Giveaway! If you submit an Aperture Trick, *which automatically grants us the right to publish it here* your name will be entered into a free drawing for a Lensbaby. (Only Nikon or Canon version available.) The drawing will be held January 28, 2006 so get busy. Give us your tips!

DISCLAIMER: Contest void where prohibited. Only United States residents are eligible to win. Must be 18 years of age or older to participate. Decision of the judges is final. No prize substitutions are allowed. Taxes the responsibility of the winner. For a list of winners send a SASE to: OMSP - P.O. Box 1114 - Gig Harbor, WA 98335.

If you have comments, tips, tricks, news or suggestions, please send them to aperturetricks at aol.com.

ApertureTricks.com reviews the reviewers in this exclusive blog-based article called,

What the Critics Don't Get About Apple's Aperture.

It's controversial and will challenge some of the false assertions already making their way through the Internet crawl space. If you like it pass it on. If you think I've got it wrong, let me know.

By the way, What the Critics Don't Get About Apple's Aperture along with all the other content on this site is available for syndication. For more information, send e-mail to aperturetricks at aol.com. Stay tuned for more Aperture Tricks over the New Year holiday. And if you have tips, tricks, secrets or news about Aperture, send it to us ASAP! We're creating the biggest Aperture community on the web with your help!

When ordering an Aperture book, Aperture creates a pdf file which is then uploaded to Apple's servers. This pdf file is stored here:

/private/var/tmp/folders.501/TemporaryItems/Aperture/Book/

This file is deleted after the upload is complete.

If you are having problems getting a book printed it may be useful to examine this file.

Do you have an Aperture Trick? Send it to aperturetricks at aol.com.

Are you frustrated by the fact that Aperture keeps the camera > generated file name when you import images? If so, there's an easy workaround. Just export the original RAW files, delete the original project and then re-import using new names to achieve the same end result. Note the renaming must be done on Export rather than Import.

Thanks Doug Young.

Remember, if you have an Aperture Trick, send it to aperturetricks at aol.com.

When you press the "Z" key to Zoom, you view the image at 100%. The image will zoom into the portion of the image that represents the location of your mouse. So to avoid panning around a large image, just place the mouse near where you want to zoom in the first place.

If you downloaded the version 1.01 Aperture bug fix, you may have noticed that the bug fix had a bug. The "receipt" wasn't updating properly and people who'd downloaded the software were getting the message that they still needed to download the update via Apple's Software Update.

Apple fixed this problem and if Aperture still shows up as a program you need to update, simply run the updater one more time and the recipt will be delivered showing your computer that the program is indeed up-to-date.

Many people are unaware that the extremely negative review of Aperture posted at ARS Technica has been updated. Here is the link:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/aperture-followup.ars

My advice is to read the update FIRST and then read the original review. Then I ask you to consider three things.

1) The guy reviewing this professional photo application is not a professional photographer.

2) Apple has posted a significant bug fix, release version 1.01 that addresses many of the complaints raised in the ARS review.

3) The sample pictures posted in the updated ARS review appear to me to be close to identical - yet Dave, the reviewer, would have us believe that there's a world of difference between the quality. As a pro with 33 years experience I don't see this great quality advantage he's talking about.

As I said in an earlier thread, it's easy to get attention when you're burning down a building. It's harder to get attention when you build something up. While I don't think Aperture is perfect, I think the ARS Technica review did the photo community a great dis-service. I also predict that in a few short months, these negative reviews will give way to more positive reviews.

If you're working on a light-table, and you make a pile of images (not a "stack", just a plain old messy pile of images stacked one on-top another), you can exposé this pile with the Shift+X keyboard shortcut ('Uncover' - there's a button for it at the top of the light-table viewer).

Thanks Adrien for submitting this trick.

Stacks are one of Aperture's coolest features. You can "stack" images together for easier compare and select or just to keep like images together. If you want to use two images from a stack independently of each other, you have several choices:

1) You can extract one of them from the stack
2) You can split the stack
3) You can just unstack the images

Remember that once you make changes to a stack, those changes will show up everywhere the stack appears.

You can also use an image outside the stack while keeping your stack intact. Hold the Option key and drag the image to a location in the browser (outside the stack.) This makes a copy. Happy stacking!

Okay the dust has had time to settle. I’ve read ten reviews of Aperture. Most have been from people I’ve never heard of. A few have been extremely negative. Of these, the one that has generated the most buzz has been the ARS TECHNICA review found at http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/aperture.ars. The author of the review admits he’s not a professional photographer. Hum? You see I find that interesting since I AM a professional photographer. I’m not sure why I should care what this guy thinks, but apparently, he’s gotten good traction for trashing Apple (It’s always easy to get attention when you beat someone up.)

But are his criticisms valid? Maybe, but in my opinion he’s overreacted. Here’s why.

Most of the reviews of Aperture were written based on no more than a day’s experience with the program. In fact, some were written by people who didn’t even have the program yet according to Apple. And all of these folks were trying to get a scoop. So they rushed to judgment.

Now compare these early reviews with more substantive efforts by places like Digital Outback Photo (http://www.outbackphoto.com/artofraw/raw_22/essay.html) and Creative Pro’s Ben Long. (http://www.creativepro.com/story/review/23756.html?cprose=daily).

While not exactly glowing endorsements, Juergen and Ben offered a more cautious approach to reviewing Aperture and managed to express some positives about the program.

And I predict that as time goes on, and Apple releases bug fixes, this chorus of nay-saying from some in the blogsphere will quiet.

My own review will probably be the most complete out there because I am putting the program through its paces for an extended period of time. I am also enlisting the help of three other professional photographers to make sure I don’t miss anything.

In the meantime, I do have enough time with Aperture now to have an initial opinion. Aperture isn’t perfect, nor is it for every photographer. But I do think Aperture has amazing promise. It is in fact GOING to be a ground breaking program. It changes the paradigm. It tries very hard to give photographers help in places they’ve never had it before. And the shipping version fell just short of some of these goals.

Now for the good news: Apple just updated the program. I think the update made the program better. There are still important issues, but Aperture has tremendous value right now in certain cases and less value in others. So far, I think the people who don't like it are struggling with trying to make Aperture work like Photoshop. It's not intended to be a Photoshop replacement. It is a different animal.

Now this is the most important point I want to make. Stop concentrating on what Aperture WON’T do, and start concentrating on what it WILL do. You’ll get a bunch more out of the program if you take that approach. It is not, nor has it ever been, designed to be a Photoshop replacement.

Why are people so obsessively comparing Aperture to Photoshop? The blame has to be shared by three groups. The media hasn’t helped because in the interest of getting a story done quickly, they used the easy comparison, i.e., Photoshop. The photo community is partly to blame for not being willing or able to open their minds to a new paradigm, and Apple is partly to blame as well. I think Apple made three big mistakes with Aperture. One: They over-hyped it - but then again, all companies seem to do this lately. Two: They overpriced it. $299 would have probably been a more reasonable price point and would have helped to manage expectations. Three: Apple rushed to market in order to get it out before Xmas and/or MacWorld. But the past is the past. It’s time for everyone to take a deep breath and look at the future.

I know, people are saying things like, “Scott, I paid $450 for this thing and I want it to work today!” Well it can work today depending on what you expect of it. For instance, I have made test prints from Aperture that are 100% as good as prints coming from Photoshop. The color management tools work! I did a portfolio shoot for a model over the weekend and processed the entire job in Aperture. I used the compare and select tools, played with the key-wording tools, sorting tools, and light tables. They are the best compare and select tools I have seen. The loupe is a very cool tool that, with some modifications will become a favorite of many photographers. The smart albums are extremely cool and the client presentation tools, i.e., the slideshow and use of a second monitor are second to none.

I do see the application maturing over time. The RAW conversions will need to get better, although depending on your camera, subject and lighting, the RAW conversions can be quite usable as they sit. There are some issues with some of the adjustment tools. But Apple already fixed the white balance tool and made performance better in v. 1.01. As someone who used Photoshop before it was even called Photoshop, I remember lots of struggles trying to get it to do what I wanted. It wasn't really a viable app for photographers in my opinion until version 5.5! I remember people saying Photoshop would never take hold or survive to version 2.0. How did those predictions work out? We’re presently on version 9.0 of Photoshop and there are STILL things that need improvement in that program, but it's doing just fine thank-you.

If you’re on the fence with Aperture, that’s okay. Some people I know never buy ANY new product, because they want others to help work out the bugs. That’s a viable strategy. But don’t completely write off Aperture because of some early bad press. Apple is a big company with big resources. I suspect they’ll get in gear and make this program what we all hope it can become, and they’ll do it sooner rather than later.

Look for my feature-by-feature review in January 06.

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/aperture101update.html

According to Apple:

Aperture 1.0.1 Update addresses a number of issues related to reliability and performance. It also delivers improved image export quality and metadata handling.

Among the key areas addressed are:

- White balance adjustment accuracy and performance
- Image export quality
- Book and print ordering reliability
- Auto-stacking performance
- Custom paper size handling


This update is recommended for all Aperture users.

Sorry we were down for about 18 hours due to server problems. We think we have the problem fixed and we appreciate your patience.

I just imported a bunch of older folders full of images into Aperture from one of my hard disks. I selected eight folders by shift-clicking them and then tried to convert them to projects. I went onto other things only to find a dialog box asking me if it was "OK" to import a folder.

This means you have to babysit the entire process.

So I tried importing just one folder and got no dialog box. While that folder was importing, I decided to drag another folder into a project and another and got no dialog box. So, here's the trick. If you want to avoid having to interact with the "OK" dialog box, don't select your folders for import as a group. Just drag them in rapid succession, one at a time into the project and you're done.

Photofocus Radio is on the air. The latest edition of Photofocus Radio is devoted to Aperture. Download the Podcast at: http://photofocus.libsyn.com/ or check out the feed at photofocus.libsyn.com/rss.

You may be surprised to find out that a site called Photoshopsupport.com has an Aperture resource center. So be surprised. Photoshopsupport.com has long been a trusted source of Photoshop stuff for me so I was pleased to see that they plan to support Aperture as well. Check them out at:

http://www.photoshopsupport.com/aperture/index.html.

I discovered (quite by accident) that if you have a folder name that starts with a tilde e.g. "~", Aperture will not show you any of the files inside that folder. This can be a pain or a boon, depending on what you want to do. Have some pictures that you don't want any casual user to see? Put them in a folder and name it "~"xxx. All you have to do in order to see the files inside the folder is to remove the tilde from the folder name. Of course if you have lots of existing photo folders you want to import into Aperture and for some reason have named them all with a tilde character in the lead, you'll have to rename all your folders.

Macworld Expo in San Francisco will be home to the first ever public training event for Aperture. Derrick Story of Mac DevCenter Editor, O'Reilly Media fame will be the speaker.

At $845 (plus whatever it costs you to eat, drink, sleep and move around San Francisco) this isn't cheap. But if you want to get the first training, this is it.

Monday's schedule:
Monday, January 9, 2006
Aperture: Photoshop Replacement or Enhancement?
Power Photography Practices
Uploading and Importing
Maximizing Metadata
Compare and Select
Backup and Archive

Tuesday's schedule:
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Image Processing
Output Power Tips

I am trying to get permission from the show management company to cover the event. If I go, I'll give you my full report here. If YOU go, be sure to drop me a line and let me know what you learned, whether or not you thought it was worth your money, and any news or TRICKS passed along by Derrick.

Announcing our first prize give away. If you submit an Aperture Trick, *which automatically grants us the right to publish it here* your name will be entered into a free drawing for a Lensbaby. (Only Nikon or Canon version available.) The drawing will be held January 28, 2006 so get busy. Give us your tips!

DISCLAIMER: Contest void where prohibited. Only United States residents are eligible to win. Must be 18 years of age or older to participate. Decision of the judges is final. No prize substitutions are allowed. Taxes the responsibility of the winner. For a list of winners send a SASE to: OMSP - P.O. Box 1114 - Gig Harbor, WA 98335.

Aperture Tricks is open to your comments, questions, news, concerns, tips and of course, your Aperture tricks. If you're ACTUALLY USING THE PROGRAM and have suggestions, tips, tricks, etc, please send them to dukeofdigital@aol.com or post comments in the comment threads. You can ask questions or relate news items if you don't use Aperture.

Please note that you will NEVER be flamed, attacked, etc., here on AT. Why? Because I moderate all comments. You can of course flame me. I will however just delete those posts.

Also, all posters must submit a valid e-mail address and register. I don't believe in ANON comments. If you're not willing to stand behind what you say, then I doubt you have anything of value to offer. The rules are simple. You must be a real person and willing to identify yourself if you want to post and you must agree to conduct yourself in a civil manner. That way, this blog can be about genuine help for people interested in Aperture and nothing else!

So if you have something useful, helpful or valuable to say, or you just have a question, by all means pipe up. We'll have some sponsors here pretty soon and I will evaluate the best tricks, comments, etc., submitted by readers and provide super prizes to AT LEAST one contributor every quarter.

Thanks!

Want to see your hidden Aperture Library documents? Just ctrl-click on the project file and browse through it just like any other Mac folder.

The reviews on Apple's Aperture are starting to pour in. Lots of reviews of the product have popped up on the Web. Some before Apple had actually shipped final retail versions of the product. That had me thinking. Some of these reviews are a bit premature.

So I called my contacts at Apple. It took several calls to several contacts. Finally I connected with Christine Wilhelmy who is a PR person at Apple and she reports directly to Cameron Craig, Apple Sr. PR Manager, Pro Apps Media Relations. She confirmed for me that some of the reviewers who reviewed Aperture didn't even have access to the program!!! No, I am not naming names. I didn't even ask for names. I just wanted to confirm my suspicion.

You see, call me old fashioned but I think you should have to actually at least have ACCESS to a program to review it! I do get tired of some of the camera club types who spout off their opinion on every camera, lens and photo-related software program whether they have actually USED the product or not. Can I get an AMEN?

I then further diagnosed the reviews I found online and decided that many of them were simply incomplete. And the reason is simple. People are rushing to judgment in order to get a scoop. How can you possibly know enough about such a ground breaking program to write a competent review in a matter of days?

So will I write a formal review of the program? You betcha! I'm not on Apple's payroll so I can say what I like. And while I'm an Aperture user, that doesn't mean I'm an Aperture cheerleaders. I'll tell it like it is.

So rather than focusing on being first, I'll focus on being complete and diligent. I will really put Aperture through its paces and THEN write a review. Besides, I already am getting hints that Apple has some modifications in mind so I will wait for reportable information on that before I post the review. Stay tuned.

It's a sure sign that Apple's Aperture is starting to take hold with photographers. The first third-party add-on for Aperture has been created. And it's an important add on if you use iView MultiMedia Pro.

A San Francisco Bay area photographer/digital guru named Adam Tow. He has created a shareware program called Annoture, a metadata bridging solution for Aperture and iView MediaPro. With Annoture, you’re just a click away from sharing metadata between these two popular image management and cataloguing applications. Spend more time working with your decisive moments than worrying about double-entry and incomplete metadata!

$15 is a steal for something that can save users this kind of time. You can see more at: http://www.tow.com/annoture/.

This is no doubt the first of many third-party add-ons for Aperture.

Lots of you were concerned when I announced new information on Apple's new photo software called Aperture. One of the biggest complaints was that Aperture currently requires that all photos in a single library are stored on the same drive. I have spoken with Apple about this and have an update.

First, this is going to change in future versions but it's not something that can be fixed in time for the official product drop date.

But there is a workaround. You can in fact have multiple libraries that are selectable from within Aperture. You can create a "personal" and a "work" library and switch between the two by selecting the desired library in Aperture and then restarting.

It's unfortunate that you can't yet switch on-the-fly between libraries without restarting, but again, in future versions, Apple expects that you will be able to do this on the fly.

What’s is Aperture? (Written Pre-Launch)

Apple’s recent announcement of a new software program for photographers has the photo industry buzzing. In fact, between the e-mail I have received at Dukeofdigital.com and Photofocus.com, more than 500 people have contacted me regarding this new program.

So what is it? We’ve seen the press releases and the demos at www.apple.com/aperture. But they only tell part of the story. For the real scoop, I spent 45 minutes on the phone yesterday with the guy who really knows what’s going on.

Joe Schorr, Product Manager for Aperture did a great job of explaining how he and Apple see the product. And in this post, I will try to summarize our wide-ranging conversation.

DO WE STILL NEED PHOTOSHOP?

Let’s get the main question answered first. Is Aperture a Photoshop replacement? Well yes and no. . . mostly no. Joe says Aperture is “An overlapping product that focuses on workflow.” In other words, Aperture is NOT a Photoshop replacement.

Apple decided to start Aperture from scratch. Not one single line of code was brought over to build the program. Apple’s developers leveraged Apple’s core image technology to make Aperture a unique program.

To decide how to make Aperture most valuable, the engineers watched over the shoulders of working professional photographers. Joe says, “We asked the question; 'If you didn’t already have software what would you create?'”

Apple decided that the real bottleneck in digital workflow came during the RAW conversion and the compare and select process. So that’s where they focused most of their efforts. Mainstream photographers might spend two hours shooting and eight hours editing/selecting. Aperture is designed to greatly speed up the latter.

So you still probably need Photoshop.

HOW IT WORKS

In Aperture, you import images from your memory card into the program. You can immediately start ranking, sorting and editing them, WITHOUT converting the RAW file. I know that this seems hard to get your mind around if you are used to a traditional RAW workflow, but once you see how it works, you won’t want to go back. When you EXPORT (i.e., make a web page, a JPEG, TIFF for printing, etc.,) Aperture does the RAW decoding on the fly. Your original is never touched and all of your edits are non-destructive. There’s no SAVE AS command.

People who are used to non-linear video or audio editing will have an easier time of grasping this. Think of an EDL (Edit Display List.) This means a text file is created storing all your changes and applied during the rendering (or exporting) process.

The basic Aperture workflow goes something like this.

1) Import RAW image
2) Compare and select
3) Employ non-destructive image processing
4) Utilize sophisticated EXIF and IPTC data encoding tools
5) Print and/or publish
6) Manage and backup data

MORE DIFFERENT

Where Aperture differs from Photoshop is that it is not designed for compositing or heavy duty editing. You can do a small amount of pixel tweaking. You can perform white balance, red-eye reduction, straighten, spot, patch, highlight recovery, exposure correction, color correction, color density correction, black and white conversions, noise reduction and image sharpening and you can do all of it at 16 bit or above. Aperture uses sophisticated floating-point calculations to make all this work. And Apple promises us that it will work very quickly.

What you can’t do in Aperture is anything that involves layers or masks. This means that if you’re the kind of photographer who owns Aperture and gets it right the first time, in the camera, you probably won’t need Photoshop. But if you need to do anything that involves compositing, you will still need to pay your tithes and offerings to Adobe.

Recognizing that most professional photographers will already have Photoshop, Apple has built in a hot-key arrangement that lets you take your images directly from Aperture, into Photoshop with one keystroke. There you can do more editing and then move the image back to Aperture – all in a seamless manner.

Many in the industry are concerned that Apple’s announcement of Aperture will cause Adobe to abandon the Mac platform as they did with their top-level video editing software, Premiere. So I asked Joe if the decision to keep Aperture from working as a direct Photoshop replacement was designed to protect the company’s relationship with Adobe. He replied that it was not a political decision but reflects the workflow issues that Apple wants to solve with Aperture.

It’s important to note that while Aperture allows for minimal image processing, i.e., the essential corrections described above, Apple claims that what Aperture does do, it does on a par with Photoshop.

Aperture’s focus is on fast and powerful RAW conversion at the BACK END, not front end of the process. And the way Aperture handles RAW files is impressive. For instance, Aperture is the only program I am aware of that lets you work with any format (INCLUDING ADOBE’S DNG!) and view the image at 100%

ALSO ACTS ORGANIZED

Aperture allows you to search and locate images easily. You can use projects, folders and albums to organize images by year, client or category. You can build Aperture “libraries” to suit your own style. You can modify metadata in almost any way conceivable. Pretty much anything you could do with iViewMultimedia Pro, Bridge or Extensis Portfolio, you can do with Aperture.

Key wording is a breeze in Aperture. You can add keywords with the click of a single key. You can search and retrieve images using smart galleries. These are automated batch processes that make finding images easier than anything I have ever seen.

And using “Vault Drives” you can use backup tools that are actually designed for use by photographers. Automatic backups are seamless and allow for the best backup solution offered in any photographic software.

CONCLUSION

What strikes me about Aperture is that it changes the rules. It means there is no longer any workflow penalty for shooting RAW. With Aperture – RAW is as easy as jpeg. It’s very forward thinking not to require the photographer to decode the RAW file as a first step. When you start making corrections in Aperture, you are working on a RAW file in a completely non-destructive way.

The program really does offer a total workflow solution with an interface designed just for photographers, and a good one at that. And while you still may need Photoshop or other image processing software, you will probably find yourself spending less time selecting, converting, editing, sharing and storing your images, no matter what tools you use, as long as you also use Aperture as well.

Apple’s target audience for Aperture is the professional photographer or aspiring pro. They admit that Aperture is not aimed at the iPhoto crowd, although, they promise educational pricing to help those who still haven’t had the ability to go pro.

At $499, the price seems high. But given the radical way in which Aperture redefines digital workflow, it just may be worth it.

This thread is just a teaser. There’s far too much to talk about in one story. Before the end of the month, I will have a more in-depth review of the product available at Photofocus.com.

Until then, it looks like Aperture might be worth the wait.

Okay we decided to jump in to the water. Aperture Tricks is online and ready for your involvement. If you're an Aperture user and have questions, tips or tricks regarding Apple's Aperture, this is the place to share them. We'll update you with Aperture news here as well. Comments are welcome as long as they are on point, devoid of personal attacks and deemed helpful to our audience. All comments must come from registered users. All comments are moderated. Please be patient. It may take a day or two for your comments to show on the Blog.