What was completely unexpected is that about 72% of people that got the upgrade email purchased the upgrade. Wow, I was expecting more like 10%. The rationale for my upgrade price was to be fair to everyone that purchased the book in the past. Most of the updates were “pretty much same church – different pew” with a couple of new things based on change functionality. I figured that I priced the first one way way too low and also figured everyone should end up paying the same amount for the new one, no matter when it was purchased.

The other thing that I found strange was that I have received very little feedback (good or bad) regarding the new version – I received plenty of feedback about the upgrade price – overwhelmingly positive – with ONE bit of strange feedback that I will not bother to repeat because I truly didn’t understand it. Something about upgrading a different eBook that was not purchased for the upgrade price of a buck or something like that. Oh well. I hope to get some feedback (good or bad) sooner or later.

On another note – I will be releasing the new version of the organization and work-flow eBook soon and have been thinking a lot about how to deal with that one. The option that keeps floating to the top is this:

A tiered upgrade offer – simple but tiered. One upgrade price (cheap) for those that EVER purchased the Aperture 2 version and another price for those that purchased the old version after Aperture 3′s release (even cheaper). My rationale for this is that there is a lot more new content (vs just revised) for things that did not exist at all. I think I am going to go with this unless there is an outcry of “go stuff yourself” – in which case I will put some more thought process to it.

Again

Sincere thank you for all of you that have upgraded – the support is appreciated.

RB

The Aperture 2 guide to file management started out at 11,000 words. It’s now almost 19,000 words for Aperture 3. There is almost nothing that did not require revision – either due to changes and new features in Aperture 3 or because I wanted to add some things here and there or to explain a few things just a little bit better. I expected a light touch up – I was wrong. Don’t worry – if you have this stuff down pat there are no earth shattering new revelations but I do go into a bit of a discussion on multiple libraries, RAW+JPEG, and some other minor stuff that was not in the Aperture 2 version of the eBook.

So how do you get it? Well it is right here on the Aperture eBooks page. The old version is no longer available – it is now a collectors item (or not). If you really want the old version shoot me an email. But wait – what’s this? The stinking price went up by a whole dollar – what the F?

After reading the drivel that is pumped out on all subjects digital photography and Aperture within days of it’s release I figured I could get away with adding a buck to the price. It still is the best value available for any eBook on any subject in the universe. The truth is I did it to be fair to all of the people buying the old version since the release of Aperture 3. Here is the deal – if you want the new version and never got the old version it is now costs a whole dollar more. You can grab it as of right …. Now.

If you already bought the the old version, ever, yesterday or two years ago you will be getting an email from me shortly that contains a way to get the new version for… wait… here it comes… ONE DOLLAR. Everyone ends up paying the same price no matter when they bought it. The only way to get it for a buck is via the email. Give it a day or so – if you don’t get one of the special coupons just email me but it must be with the email that you used for your original paypal payment for the old eBook.

RB

Ps. I do my best but I am sure there are some errors, even though I go through and actually test everything exactly as I have written it. I would be forever grateful for those that point them out. I will correct the errors/omissions and send you a new copy as well.

I am doing this because I love this community and I volunteer to help people – I believe in the product so much. Much of the work-flow advice that I give in the eBooks is absolutely spot on. Aperture 3 adds some new twists especially with more than one computer. I will have my existing eBook library updated ASAP – probably this month as I am going to do it full time but take the proper care to make them the best out there at any price.

That being said – if you buy one now you will get the upgrade price, if you have one you will get the upgrade price. If you do not have one the prices are going up when the new ones are out. They will still be the best value in the Aperture 3 universe. They will be the best at the lowest price but I am going to do some new things like screencast videos etc. So whatever you buy now or later you will pay the same amount. That is the only fair way that I can do it. I am not going to penalizing my existing customers for buying them too soon.

The reason that I started doing this in the first place is that there were not a whole lot of accurate, innovative information on this amazing product. I don’t believe in regurgitating the manual – that is not what you get. When I survey the landscape out there the price vs information is not there. It is here – since I am going to invest a ton of time in this I am going to have to raise my prices – a little bit.

RB

Ps. I was right on holding off on the adjustments and the metadata eBooks – they are the ones that are changing in a gigantic way.

There is far more to the book tool that just Apple provided themes and Apple printed books. The book tool is really a tool to print any thing you want. Even if you don’t print things it can do all kinds of stuff to combine images and text. Well enough on about the Aperture book tool and a little more about the eBook.

This is a strange eBook. It is in the normal vein of my other eBooks as in it is conceptual with concrete examples more than it is a regurgitation of the Aperture manual. I rewrote this one twice. I hope I got the balance right between explaining the tools and providing simple examples to reinforce the concepts. My last version was too heavy on design topics that clouds the issue so I got rid of that and use examples that don’t focus on design at all. My first version was way too technical explaining all kinds of things nobody but me will every give a crap about. This one I hope is a good balance and more what I had in mind when I started.

I think it is good for people that have never used the book tool as well as those that have but have a lot of questions about it as well. The one thing I do not do is explain things like what a text box is or what a picture box is – those things are self evident and make the conceptual part too hard to get through. Even with leaving out complicated design, and explanations of each and every individual tool it ended up being longer than I expected – about 12,000 words.

Even though I provide a few step by step examples to reinforce the topics discussed, I included some bonus content as well. A couple of screencasts that walk through the first few examples and one of the Automator workflows that I discuss, just so you don’t have to use Automator itself if you don’t want to.

Take a look Aperture eBooks.

Enjoy

RB

Right now I have been working on the next one for the last month and it is pretty slow going. It is dedicated to the Aperture book tool. I am finding this one pretty difficult. I have totally rewritten it once so far. It’s pretty difficult to hone in on making the book tool info succinct while being somewhat comprehensive. I hope to get this thing ready to go on air in the next month.

Now for  a tiny little bit of self promotion – I was overwhelmed by the amount of positive feedback I have received so far. Here are just a couple of snippets that did not embarrass me too much.

…wanted to let you know that I thought is was great – I learned quiet a few things. Your discussion of stacks and stack picks and album picks was a revelation for me. One thing that I do for family events is print 6×4 prints and I must do a special cropping to this aspect ratio. I have forced Aperture to do this with great effort and pain. Your example of how you do 8×10 cropping was an “ah-ha” moment for me. I found many other useful bits of info as well. I have read a book on Aperture usage and did the lynda.com online training, but your presentation of the material was best. After I hit send on this email, I am going to buy your other ebook based on my great experience with this one. …

Tom USA

…I am incredibly impressed with the way you lay out and
communicate Aperture and its many uses.  … Thank
you for sharing all of your knowledge about Aperture!

Brad USA

…Thank you for the wonderful ebooks! I downloaded both of them and really enjoyed reading them. Manuals are great but boring to read which is why books like yours are needed to make learning experience fun…

Leo

…thought I would drop you a quick note to express my appreciation of your knowledge and advice.  I still have a great deal to go through on RB Design but have already whipped my Previews into shape and, through the use of blue folders, have my projects nicely organised, finally!

Derek Story’s excellent DVD from Lynda.com gave me a solid foundation in Aperture but I have since been looking for a source to help with the detail.  … I also just bought the Apple Pro Training book but probably should have saved myself the money – having had a quick look at this,  for example, there is nothing like the detail in your Managing Previews…

Nicholas Hong Kong

Okay okay enough already – Thank you all. Now I have to get back to the darkroom where I am continually humbled by simple particles of silver that are not so generous with the feedback and are much more intolerant and demanding task masters than all of you.

RB

I have refined and expanded the coverage of some of the things that I covered in the free version but by no means is there any earth shattering new things. I have added a couple of things and change the way I have presented a few as well. I added some example material that I have been making notes of from people that have given me feedback or had additional questions but this is by no means  a whole new ball game.

If you have the old one and enjoyed it and feel like sending a couple of bucks my way. Great, it is always appreciated. If you don’t that is fine as well, hold on to your first version – it is a collectors item. Decoded that means please do not distribute the old version, it is no longer available. If you don’t have the old one or are dying to see what I added you will probably enjoy the new one. I don’t want to do so much patting myself on the back just because I put a lot of work into it but I can say that every piece of feedback that I have received on the old version was overwhelmingly positive. Almost 10,000 downloads of the old version, hundreds of emails from fans. In fact that is what motivated me to expand it and cover some other Aperture topics in the eBook format as well. Promises of first born children and such. The new one is better.

Okay what kind of stuff did I add – mostly just tidbits. Like how to deal with the issue that “edit with…” doesn’t make the new version the album pick. Things like that. Stuff that I thought was obvious in the first version that was apparently not so obvious. Maybe I added a few more work-flow type things.

Seriously if you understood everything I wrote on organization on this site you don’t need it. If you want some of it explained a little differently and all put together in one spot it might be what you are looking for. If you don’t have the old Aperture Organization Guide – You need this!

Get your brand spanking new Aperture eBooks while they last right here.

RB

While I have tried to remain succinct, I have also attempted to be definitive in connecting all the dots with Aperture’s file management tools. This is the first edition but as far as humanly possible I have verified everything that is in it to be accurate. Now that took some time. The PDF eBook is 25 pages and covers not only managed and referenced files but previews, some common scenarios as examples, backup, how to take your library on the road with you, a couple of tips for dealing with the inevitable broken or corrupted library, even a brief discussion on RAID. You can get it here.

Here is some other news. You may have noticed that the PayPal donate button is gone. Here is the story – after two months I cannot even pay my hosting bill with the proceeds. Please know that I appreciate the many many folks that donated – I really do. Remember when I said I would give you a free eBook – well I lied. Well I didn’t lie I just changed my mind. I didn’t think that was fair since some people donated a whole lot and some people did not. Here is what I did instead – I accepted NONE of the donations, NOT ONE. Nobody that was kind enough to donate to my endeavors on the site has been billed not one dime yet and every single one that I received will have expired within 30 days from yesterday.

What I did instead was take the very smallest donation that I received, subtracted one penny, and made that the price of the eBook. If you want it and think it would help you great, if not that is fine to. If you made a donation that I did not collect and want to hold me to my word of a free eBook just give me an email – I do not want to be considered someone that goes back on my word.

If anyone has any issues buying or downloading the book please email me at rwboyer@mac.com and let me know ASAP. If you are one of the first ones to get your hands on the first edition and find something horribly askew or have any suggestions to improve the next version drop me a line – if it is something other than a spelling error I may even give you a free copy of the other eBooks that are in progress.

Enjoy

RB

I will try to cover some of the other user interface customization features in future articles but this is a pretty good place to start. Without further adieu here is the Guide to Customizing Aperture 2 Metadata Display: Aperture Metadata Display PDF (2199) - 2.08 MB. If anyone would would like to post corrections, ideas, or ways that you use any of these features feel free to comment or e-mail me.

RB

Aperture eBooks

Oh one more thing – just because it is only five bucks doesn’t mean it’s not better than other way more expensive resources. It is – in most cases you will learn more from this guide than reading everything else out there in print and on the web. This is not a regurgitation of the Aperture documentation and this is not a book for dummies. Consider me an extremely value conscious Robin Hood.

Please leave comments with any feedback or email me here rwboyer@mac.com

The following is a snip of the original post describing the screen shot above.

Here is a description of a few things going on with this structure that may help clarify how one can use some of the grouping features of Aperture.

Note the blue folders – these can contain projects, other blue folders, and a few items that are usually found inside projects (smart albums etc.) I use these to group related projects and some items that are useful that are associated with the grouped projects.

Looking at the blue folder named “Glamour” you can see that there are a bunch of yellow project boxes in there, they are all individual studio sessions that I shot as promo material for lighting workshops that I do. There is also another blue folder inside of “Glamour” named “Albums”. Note that they do not “live” in a project at all. I am using those to group images of the same model that are in more that one project. There is also a purple smart album named “Rated” that lives at the top level of the “Glamour” folder. I am using this smart album to collect all of the images that have a rating of one star or above in all of the different projects under the “Glamour” folder. Since I created the smart album inside of the “Glamour” folder it is only going to collect images in projects under that folder, not everything in the library. This is a great way to limit the context of smart albums etc. with out making ridiculously complex search criteria or going back and redoing a bunch of keywording etc. One other note, There is a project in the “Glamour” folder named “Workshop” this project contains a couple of objects, namely Layout, Prints, and Workshop Book. This Workshop project contains NO image masters or versions but does contain pointers to masters/versions in other projects under “Glamour”. I use this project to contain a book and printed promo material that is derived from images that are in the rated smart album. Why is it in a project? So that I can export it as an Aperture project and import it to other Aperture libraries. Why do I have the static albums for each model? So I can keep a static order to the images and run a slideshow preset on them.

Onto another blue folder “Experimental Projects”, I am using this to group two projects that I was actually shooting today. If you look at the project “Ghost Ships” you can see yellow folders named “Albums” and “Light Tables”. Yellow folders are really simple, they exist only inside projects and are used to group and organize stuff inside projects. Here I am using them in an extremely simple way. One for my albums, one for some layout ideas on how different images play together. After I export the project and import it to my main library on my desktop workstation the population of yellow folders under that project will probably change quite a bit to group a bunch of different but related things together.

This is a very basic example of folders and projects. If anyone is interested at all I would be glad to put an illustrated PDF guide together that explains exactly how all of this stuff works in different contexts and workflows along with some ideas on how each feature from basic to advanced context tricks can be used effectively. Just leave a message here or hit me up on my email.

Finally had a chance to do some editing and corrected some typos and minor phasing.

RB