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Moving Towards Aperture
A photographer friend of mine recently purchased his first Apple computer. You can read all about the system we put together over at AUPN by following this link. Initially the plan was to install Adobe Photoshop Lightroom as that was the program he had been using to manage and process all of his images up until now.
After installing Lightroom he was able to easily move his image catalog from his Windows machine to the new Mac. He was off and running and getting to know his way around Leopard. So, after a couple of weeks I decided to stop by and show off Aperture. I wasn’t really trying to convert him, but I thought he should at least see what he was missing.
One of the bigger decisions when we were building his new system was the displays. Eventually he decided on two 23” Apple Cinema Displays. So my first inclination was to show him Aperture’s amazing dual monitor mode. It is really something to be able to view your archive on one panel while displaying the currently selected image, full screen, on the second.
Aperture is incredibly flexible in this regard. You can set up your interface in just about any way you like. Not only can you change the settings for both the primary and secondary panels, but you can do this in a completely different way in full-screen mode if you wish.
Three-up mode is also a really nice way to edit, especially if you shoot portraits or sports where you wind up with lots of bursts of the same subject. With twin monitors you can set one monitor in three-up mode, showing the currently selected image and the previous and next image in the sequence, and on the second screen you can display the currently selected image full screen. What a great way to edit!
Dual screen support nearly sold him on Aperture, but I needed to show him more. Since Aperture was released one of my favorite features has been the HUDs. It is really nice to be able to edit your images at anytime and in any area of the software. Just hit the H key and you can make adjustments on the fly. With a dual screen system it just gets better and better. On the left monitor we have the standard Aperture browser set up with the Project pane on the far left, and the metadata pane on the far right. He seems to like to leave it in the thumbnail view in most cases with the second panel displaying the selected image full screen, using the floating HUD to do RAW adjustments.
I also had to spend a good deal of time re-wiring him a little to get him used to the way Aperture organizes things. In Lightroom you essentially have the folder structure as it exists on your disk and collections. However, with Aperture you have a few more options and a few basic rules. For example, an image in Aperture must exist in a Project and an image can only exist in one project. It took a few minutes for me to help him understand just what a project is, and what you can do with Albums and Folders. But in the end I think it started to make sense. The idea that you really don’t need to worry too much about where your images exist on disk is a pretty nice feeling. He decided to go with a mostly Referenced file structure, placing all of his Master image files on a Drobo hard drive array, and using TIme Machine to back up his files to a secondary large external hard drive.
I think I probably overwhelmed him at first with all of the things that Aperture can do. I showed him the Light Table and how to make Web Galleries, but I really saw the sparks begin to fly when I explained to him what a Smart Album was. The ability to essentially save a query is so powerful and so useful. He already has a number of Smart Albums set up in a Blue Folder called “Smart Albums.” These include a few searches he seems to do on a regular basis and one that I really like to use that shows you which files in your library are Managed.
Albeit, he has a little thinking to do in terms of how he is going to organize his archive. We talked about creating blue, top level folders to represent offline archives stored on shelved hard drives. This seemed like a good idea and a pretty nice way to be able to identify where a set of images are stored offline.
Our next task is to get both of his monitors calibrated. The Apple Cinema Displays come from the factory with a pretty close profile, but in order to make prints, they really need to be calibrated. One interesting tidbit we noticed is that there is no brightness control for the second display in System Preferences. You can turn the brightness down manually using the buttons on the side of the display, but the software slider for brightness in the system preferences only seems to affect the primary monitor.
The monitors are really amazing out of the box, but we have already noticed that the brightness is way too high for print making. So we essentially had to turn them down to the lowest setting. I think he definitely made the right choice with the dual monitor set up. So far it has been a dream to work this way with Aperture and I can already see the creative juices starting to flow again.
Oh, and I think if I had to pick my friend’s favorite feature of Leopard, it would have to be Spaces! He already has Aperture set to launch in a separate space. And, just in case he needs to revert back to Windows, we set up XP under Parallels, full screen, on the right hand display, and in its own private space.
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Did you let him know that there's no easy way to import metadata from his Lightroom catalog into Aperture?
Being able to correctly profile an Apple Cinema display is a big headache for any owner. The only software that I am aware of that allows for these displays to be correctly calibrated is Color Eyes Display from Integrated Color:
http://www.integrated-color.com/cedpro/coloreyesdisplay.html
Well worth the money and you can buy a software only version that works with most hardware devices and also any display (including the Apple displays that only have brightness control). An excellent application with top-notch technical support from the most knowledgeable color management group.
While I loved using Aperture during a trial, I'm holding off on buying it until I see that they're actually committed to it.
All has been VERY quiet on the Aperture front of late. Makes me wonder if we'll ever see another version, in which case I would've bought something that is "legacy" less than two years after it first shipped!
I am realllllllly hoping that 2.0 will be announced at MacWorld. Pleasssssse :)
I am dying without Nikon D3 Raw support.
The legacy thing worries me with Aperture, if only I had the option to export my masters with the meta-data embbeded then I wouldn't need to worry. Also I'd like to be able to 'export library' rather than have to export each and every project (I have thousands).
Funny, I've been considering going the opposite way. Unfortunately my photoblog software doesn't do trackbacks, but if it did it would be here:
Moving towards Lightroom (aka desperately seeking 2.0)
http://www.postcardfromcaledonia.com/index.php?showimage=92
@Caledonia:
After reading your blog entry: please be aware, that Lightroom and Time Machine don't go well together either. It's the very same problem with the database like in Aperture.
@Mike
YES - I meant to actually state that in the article as well - good point.
If you and your friend had only waited until today to look at buying the MacPro, you could have gotten the enormous new upgrade in 45nm processing power and video cards (not to mention system architecture). Personally, I'm waiting for the switch to 35nm in the next two years or so since I do a lot more than photography. For now, my old 17" PowerBook 1.67Ghz G4 will have to do .
In all seriousness, older Macs still do a decent job of running Aperture. I'll edit 100s of photos at a time, and It doesn't take too many hours to edit metadata, do touch-ups, stack, and all the other usual tasks imports get me. I even threw in a second 250 HD inside (in place of the optical drive) so most of my library goes with me.
However, I definitely wouldn't shun a faster machine. Some edits are "real time" with their responsiveness, and some aren't. That's why I haven't bothered with buying an external display yet - it'll eat more of what little power I have.
Anyone here finally going to by a MP now with the new upgrades?
Aperture runs very slow for me. Been using it for a while now and have too many files and takes too long generating previews.
I have a top of the line Mac Pro. Can I upgrade my video card to the 512MB ones announced? How much of a difference will it make?
THANKS
@ Anonymous:
I would think you'd be able to upgrade your card since it would be supported by Mac OS. Another part of your problem might be the display.
Whenever you go beyond the 3 basic small version of your photo that Aperture uses, the machine has to dynamically resize it to the screen. When the screen isn't an easy ratio to convert to, whether it be in the viewer or full-screen mode, then a lot is asked of your GPU. I do ok with 10MP photos and a 1440x900 res screen, but it definitely takes a couple secs. or more to load each photo initially, and then a few sticky delays during edits.
I've heard that the 30" display takes more time to work with images than two 23-inchers because of the width and odd ratio. I can't verify it personally, but it makes since with the photo being matched to the extra-wide width. If you're totall curious, check you photo resolution against the screen.
I never thought about that. Thanks for the idea!!
Obviously your friend is not a user of a Nikon D3, or D300, or one of the host of other cameras that Aperture still does not support, weeks after they are introduced and supported by Lightroom.
Aperture is becoming irrelevant for a lot of photographers who are annoyed by Apple's lack of support for their cameras, and fearful for what that means for Apple's long term commmitment to this area.
@ Jeremy
Congrats on the new camera(s). However, not everyone uses Nikon, much less their newest models, so Aperture works just fine for many people. Yes, Nikon is one of the two largest branded photography ventures, so you would think if Apple was getting serious about this being a sturdy leg of their pro app. line, then they'd be on the ball about supporting the tools their user base utilizes. I only have the slightest of worries over apple supporting future updates, but if comes to waiting on updates to get new features like something similar to Photoshop's "remove distortion" filter, I'm fine waiting on it. I'd reserve judgement on the app's longevity until after Macworld.
I personally don't care too much about Nikon support since I use Canon, but if you want to barrage them into submission, send requests to them here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/aperture.html
I am personally not that much afraid of this whole Apple-will-abandon-Aperture scare esp. concerning camera support issue. Remember, that RAW support is essentially a feature of Mac OS X itself, not Aperture (it's what lets you open RAW files in Preview.app and other "basic" programs)! And OS upgrade influences a lot more people then just us Aperture users so it has to be taken carefully.
My take is - Lightroom will definitely be updated at a much more rapid pace and it'll see a lot more 3rd-party developers' love but I still wouldn't go Adobe way, thank you all the same! Having mastered Aperture through and through I'm running circles around my PC friends stuck with Lightroom - I can do so much more, and I do it so fast! Anything else is just herding turtles :-)
Smart Albums is one of my favorite features of Aperture, plus the interface. Though I think LR has a lot more to offer on the development side, it's interface is more time consuming than Aperture, so that's why I use Aperture for my wedding photography work, and LR for all other images.