Archives / 2009 / January

71

Aperture 2 – File Management

Where and how Aperture keeps original image files, referred to as masters, is a topic of constant discussion and for some – constant confusion. I hope to shed some light on the topic for new users and maybe show some old dogs a couple of new tricks in the file management department. Starting at the beginning Aperture allows you to choose two different approaches to managing your original image files. The first way is called “managed” masters. If you choose to use “managed” masters Aperture will automatically copy all...

29 January 2009 | Apple Aperture, Articles | , , , , , , | 71 Comments
3

Notes and Some Other Odds and Ends

The economy is terrible. So we hear, all day, everyday. my family and friends have been impacted in some minor and some significant ways. Not to be a downer but I did want to mention some sorry news that I happened to read over the weekend while catching up on my slash dot reading (yes I am that much of a geek in some ways). I may be way behind here but I just wanted readers to know that a bunch of people over at O’Reilly Publishing in the...

26 January 2009 | Articles, Site News | 3 Comments
8

Presenting Your Photographs

I am not yet a huge fan of the web as a presentation medium for my photography. No I am not old fashioned and I didn’t say that I was not a fan of digital presentation. For some reason I just am not a huge fan of web galleries, online portfolios and the like. As you may have noticed I don’t have a bunch of galleries posted. When it comes to presenting my photographs you can probably tell if you have read more than two posts on my blog...

24 January 2009 | Apple Aperture, Articles | , , , , | 8 Comments
4

What is Important?

Interesting question. What is important – photographically. I guess if you make your livelihood from images, all of those that make money are pretty darn important. Even so… If you ask yourself the question “what images are important” as I have asked myself countless times while making images, while editing images, while being really bored and philosophical, and now amazingly enough, asked the same question by a reader that thinks that I might have the answer. I really don’t have the answer to that question. I have an opinion....

22 January 2009 | Articles, General Photography | | 4 Comments
14

Why Shoot RAW

I have received a bunch of feedback on a couple of articles regarding NEF processing in Aperture. More than a few were questioning the value of shooting RAW files at all if the camera does such a good job processing JPG files with in camera settings. I thought that I would share a couple of my thoughts on this along with a contrived example for the non-believers out there. With storage costs being so idiotically inexpensive and generally huge when compared with real world numbers of still images that...

18 January 2009 | Articles, General Photography | , , , , | 14 Comments
12

Aperture 2 Quick Tip – Shooting RAW+JPG

This little tidbit is probably available in a bunch of different places but I thought I would post it here because it comes up in the Apple support forums so often, I get asked about it a bunch, and as someone highlighted the Apple Aperture documentation is extremely esoteric on the matter. If you have a Canon or Nikon DSLR you probably have the option to shoot RAW+JPG. This is pretty cool given that you can have your cake and eat it to. RAWs for post processing and a...

14 January 2009 | Apple Aperture, Articles | , , , , , | 12 Comments
0

Aperture Book Tricks

About every seven minutes a question comes up on the Apple Aperture support forum that boils down to “How do I put text on images using Aperture”. If I happen to see it I usually will try to walk the poor hapless victim through using the Aperture book feature to do it. I felt it might be useful for me to do that here for a couple of reasons. The first being – putting text on images with Aperture, the second and probably more important is perhaps getting people...

13 January 2009 | Apple Aperture, Articles | , , | 0 Comments
6

Aperture – The Seven Deadly Sins

Well, not really seven, it’s just a title that I like to use pertaining to a couple of things that you can do that really bog down Aperture’s performance. After some encouragement from a new found iFriend Michael I have decided to wade into the murky and treacherous waters of managing performance in Aperture. To kick things off I thought that I would highlight the obvious (or not). Just one little “your mileage may vary” type of disclaimer first – remember that this kind of stuff is highly variable...

10 January 2009 | Apple Aperture, Articles, Lighting, Site News | , , , , , , | 6 Comments
18

Aperture 2 Quick Tip – Highlights and Shadows

As anybody that reads this blog knows I rarely post any articles that relate to image adjustments. The reason for this is that I feel the web is chock full of how-to sites regarding image manipulation. Some good and some not so good. While I will continue to post mainly work-flow related articles I wanted to depart just a little bit and post something on a set of adjustment features contained in  Aperture that I feel is superior and far more accessible than other products. Not only that but...

07 January 2009 | Apple Aperture, Articles | , , , , , , , | 18 Comments
22

Aperture 2 Quick Tip – Managing Previews

Previews are one of the most misunderstood and notoriously undocumented things in Aperture. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about what you can and cannot do when you have referenced masters that are off-line, as in all of your masters are on external drives and your library with previews happens to be on your laptop while you are away. Previews make some of the functionality that I mentioned possible. Understanding how to manage previews within Aperture is essential to effectively managing storage, performance, and functionality. Unfortunately...

03 January 2009 | Apple Aperture, Articles | , , , , | 22 Comments
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