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dowden photography
10-02-2010, 5:41pm
Good to see Apple release Aperture 3 in the last few days, looks good so far, downloading it now so full report to come.

Aperture 2 IMO was better than Lightroom 2 so hopefully 3 will be better than LR 3

SSSchwing
01-06-2010, 6:39pm
So it's been a while since I've posted, but i figure where else but here to ask for hints and tips :)

Rather than start a new thread, figured I'd tag on to this one.

I've recently bought a new 27" iMac and of course, am now using Aperture 3 rather Lightroom on my old PC.

Anyone know of any good tutorials for Aperture? I am a click and play type learner, so I'll pick things up as I go but figure that some learning never hurt anyone :cool:

JM Tran
01-06-2010, 6:43pm
would be great if you can do a review on this, I am looking at Aperture 3 for the Mac instead of Lightroom in the next few weeks.........!

SSSchwing
01-06-2010, 7:03pm
so far, its pretty different in the workflow aspect, although not too hard to get a handle on.

the adjustments are quite similar, although there are a few different things that are cool to have.

it has the face recognition which if you take portraits can be handy i guess :)

I haven't gone too deep into Aperture world yet, but as I go, I'll post up my thoughts. At the moment though, I can say it's a nice program and I think will be everything that Lightroom is, just Applized.

My biggest issue is going from a 19" old school Dell monitor to the high res 27" Mac one.... feels much different from a colour/saturation point of view but I'll sort that over time.

You guys can tell me, does this look over saturated?

JM Tran
01-06-2010, 7:07pm
yeah on my calibrated monitor it is a tad overly saturated, esp in the greens and blues

have u calibrated the iMac monitor yet?

SSSchwing
01-06-2010, 7:24pm
No, not yet. I've actually just been reading all the thoughts on the different calibration gizmos...

Still trying to work out if its worth purchasing the Sypder 3 Express or just get the pro etc....

Calxoddity
01-06-2010, 10:22pm
would be great if you can do a review on this, I am looking at Aperture 3 for the Mac instead of Lightroom in the next few weeks.........!

Happy to oblige!

Here's Aperture 3 review in a nutshell (or several shells - your mileage may vary):

1. It's a DAM, just like Lightroom, but behaves differently. Being a non-Adobe application, there's no obligation to preserve Adobe's menu and navigation quirks, that have kind of accreted over years of Adobe produce evolution and mutation. One of the best things you can do is approach Aperture with an open mind, and RTFM.

2. The DAM paradigm of Aperture is based around managing your images entirely through Aperture - in other words if you've paid good money for a DAM, you may as well treat it as one. Images are imported into Aperture to be managed as either "managed" mode (images are imported into Aperture's library and managed there) or "referenced" mode (images are left where they are on the hard disk, but are managed by Aperture). In both cases you would normally no longer use Finder to locate, move or open images.

3. The central construct for managing images in Aperture is the Project (think "assignment" or "event"). Every image under management is located in one Project only. Albums contain pointers to images resident in a Project, so an image may appear in multiple albums without ever actually moving or copying the master in its Project. Folders in Aperture allow you to manage and group your Projects into logical sets.

4. Processing in Aperture is non-destructive - all processing of an image is stored as a set of instructions that get applied to the master to produce the post-processed appearance. You can therefore create multiple version of an image with different post-processing treatments, yet only have one master with mutiple sets of processing instructions associated with it (hope that makes sense).

5. Something that confuses Aperture noobs is the idea that you don't have to save - it saves as you go. Also, there's no "save as" - instead you export the master or a version of the master in a range of different formats and sizes.

6. Processing in Aperture 3 is much more extensive than Aperture 2 - the bit addition is selective brushing in of adjustments. This is a lot cooler than it sounds, as you can even brush in curves adjustments and overlay one brushed adjustment over the other.

7. Raw processing generally is very nice indeed, with lots of options for tweaking the image. I'm constantly amazed how much I can recover from hot highlights and apparent darkness in D40 nefs. Be aware that some Adobe adjustments have different names but similar functions in Aperture (e.g. clarity vs definition).

8. Noise reduction is an area where Aperture is not as good as some would hope, but it still does a reasonable job. Heavy noise reduction is not its forte however.

9. The Book feature has no real equivalent in Lightroom, as far as I'm aware. I've created custom book layouts for some photobooks and printed them on the R1900 here at home to very good effect.

10. What is Aperture not so good at? Can't do gradients or directly replicate gradient filter effects. Can't stitch panos. Can't merge or overlay photos. Can't put text onto a photo (except doing as a book, which could be a one-page "book"). There's some criticism of the metadata handling, but without going into a very long story this is at least partly because ITPC metadata standards aren't always handled the same by all image applications.

11. Three cheers for soft-proofing - you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

12. User interface is exceptional. Go to an Apple store and give Aperture a play and you'll be blown away. Press F key to go into fullscreen mode and it's a pleasure to work with photos.

13. Keywording capability is good and is supplemented by ability to flag, rate, and colour label images for management and sorting purposes.

I could go on but wifey is hassling me... ow! ow!

Check out the Aperture 3 review on www.arstechnica.com or PM me if you want more specific info.

Good luck!

Calxoddity
01-06-2010, 10:24pm
Adrian,
Go to Dymocks and buy the Aperture 3 book and go through the tutorials and exercises if you want to learn how to do it properly.

Regards,
Calx

dowden photography
01-06-2010, 10:44pm
No, not yet. I've actually just been reading all the thoughts on the different calibration gizmos...

Still trying to work out if its worth purchasing the Sypder 3 Express or just get the pro etc....

Just redoing my screens tonight, I do them every 3 months and even that is too far apart.

As for Aperture, I used to be a Apple Product Professional when I worked at an apple reseller up to 2008.

Aperture is the best out of Lightroom & Aperture, its easy to use, quick short cuts, fast with a quick mac and plug ins work just as well. Its very easy to use.

You do need a quick mac tho, its now 64-bit so it can use that extra ram and with faces & places your keywording is a bit easier.

As for the best place to find help, go to http://www.apertureexpert.com/ it's a newish site but lots of usefully tips.

Download a full free trail from apples site if you want.

dowden photography
01-06-2010, 10:45pm
so far, its pretty different in the workflow aspect, although not too hard to get a handle on.

the adjustments are quite similar, although there are a few different things that are cool to have.

it has the face recognition which if you take portraits can be handy i guess :)

I haven't gone too deep into Aperture world yet, but as I go, I'll post up my thoughts. At the moment though, I can say it's a nice program and I think will be everything that Lightroom is, just Applized.

My biggest issue is going from a 19" old school Dell monitor to the high res 27" Mac one.... feels much different from a colour/saturation point of view but I'll sort that over time.

You guys can tell me, does this look over saturated?

The greens do on mine

SSSchwing
02-06-2010, 7:26am
Thanks guys!

Calx, nice write up :)

I will def check out the book and the link from dowden and I think my next purchase will be the calibration tool. Least then it's a little easier to get the colours etc right.

Geoff
02-06-2010, 9:12pm
Very quick question (from a very new Mac owner) does Aperture allow the ability to incorporate PS into the workflow natively? (i.e. is there a menu option to edit a photo in PS and then, on save in PS, the updated file appears in Aperture?)

Also - any opinions on the quality of RAW file handling? I've read reviews (dated now) that suggested captureOne (which I just discovered comes with some MS DAP) might have an edge there (it's also much more $$)

Calxoddity
02-06-2010, 10:44pm
Very quick question (from a very new Mac owner) does Aperture allow the ability to incorporate PS into the workflow natively? (i.e. is there a menu option to edit a photo in PS and then, on save in PS, the updated file appears in Aperture?)

Also - any opinions on the quality of RAW file handling? I've read reviews (dated now) that suggested captureOne (which I just discovered comes with some MS DAP) might have an edge there (it's also much more $$)

Geoff,
Depends what you mean by natively.

The "edit with" command can be set to any external editor you so desire, and I actually change it from PS to Tiffen DFX2 to Corel Painter, depending on what I want to do (would be nice if you could have multiple external editors designated, but that's life).

When you send the image to an external editor, it takes a tiff (or psd) of the selected raw file, with all the adjustments up to that point, and send it to the external editor. In your case, PS then opens and displays the resulting tiff (or psd) and away to go. When you click on "Save" in PS, it will save over the tiff that was created.

The raw processing in A3 is very good indeed. To say that Capture 1 is "better" may, possibly, be true - maybe. At an obscene pixel-peeping level. Under some circumstances. With some camera raw formats and not others.

Try the Aperture 30-day trial.

Regards,
Calx