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Quick Preview
Wow, Aperture 2 is amazingly fast. I feel like someone snuck a new CPU into my machine while I was installing the Aperture 2 preview. It loads 20+ MB, 21MP 1Ds Mark III RAW files in just a few seconds on my MacBook Pro, and it scrolls through hundreds of those images quickly. Yet believe it or not, there's a way to make things even faster!
One of the new features is a mode called "Quick Preview" (I guess "Greased Lightning Preview" wouldn't fit in the tooltip). The idea here is that there are often small JPEG previews of your large RAW files available (e.g. an embedded JPEG preview within the RAW file), and by leveraging that preview, Aperture doesn't have to waste time decoding the RAW file. To enable/disbale Quick Preview, select View > Quick Preview, press p, or click the Quick Preview button below the viewer (see the screenshot). To quickly tell if Quick Preview is enabled, look at your highlight color in the browser. If it's yellow, then Quick Preview is enabled. To get an idea of how fast this mode is, go to an album with lots of RAW files, turn Quick Preview on, select the first image, and then hold down the right arrow key.
You might be tempted to stop reading because you've turned preview generation off for your projects. Keep reading and don't worry--Quick Preview should still work for you (see my experiment notes at the bottom)!
One big caveat is that because these previews are coming from your camera, there will be some color and sharpness differences between the preview and the RAW image. To help make sure you're working with the most accurate file, Aperture disables image adjustments when in Quick Preview mode. If you want to adjust an image, press p to exit Quick Preview, make your adjustments, and then press p to re-enter Quick Preview and keep moving through your images. To clearly see the differences, zoom in on your image and toggle in and out of Quick Preview mode.
Why is this mode useful if the image isn't completely accurate? Well, for one, many times for just finding an image "close enough" really is good enough! If I'm looking for the shot where this action is happening and I can't see the specific image in a thumbnail, I'm going to fire up my viewer and scan for it as quickly as possible. Secondly, many times a rough preview is enough to make initial editing decisions. You can clearly tell an unsaveable image with a bad composition. Lastly, if you just want to bring up a project and show your images without entering a slide show mode, this is a great way to show someone your shots!
I tried a few experiments tonight, and here's what I found. First, I took 2 CR2 files (with embedded previews) and 2 DNG files (with no embedded JPEG preview). Then, I turned previews off within a project and imported these images. Just to be safe, I selected the images, control-clicked, and selected "Delete Previews." Then, I went into Quick Preview mode, and everything worked instantaneously.
For trial 2, I turned preview generation back on, updated my previews (select all, control-click, select "Update Previews"), quit Aperture, and then opened one jpg preview up in Photoshop and drew lots of strokes on top of it. When I re-opened Aperture, none of the strokes from the DNG file's preview appeared in Aperture at first, but later on, after I control-clicked on another image and selected "Delete Preview," the strokes did show up.
For trial 3, I made some very obvious adjustments to CR2 and DNG images and then deleted their previews. I confirmed that there were no files created in the Finder, yet the images showed up correctly in Aperture, even when I browsed away to other projects and back again.
The summary, from what I can tell, is that some group of engineers really nailed this feature!
Comments (13)
is it necessary to upgrade to leopard to process 1Ds Mark III raw files?
I believe 10.4.11 with Aperture 2 will give you support for the 1Ds MkIII.
just want to know, what mbp did you use? i've been reading several conflicting stories about how aperture runs on mbp's and mb's where users of either portables have different experiences running aperture...
I have one of the original MacBook Pros, a 2.16 Ghz Core Duo with 2GB of RAM. I'm not sure how much faster A2 is on a MacBook, but on a MacBook Pro, it's pretty amazing!
Thanks Josh. I'm upgrading to a MacBook Pro pretty soon (hopefully the rumored 2.5ghz version) and currently deciding if I should get Aperture. Had to ask because I have some friends who said that Aperture runs pretty slow on their 17in., 2.4ghz MacBook Pro's.
Tell your friends to try Aperture 2 and see if they still think it's slow ;) If you're on the fence, download the trial version when you get your new laptop and see what you think!
Has anybody done any performance of the meta data engine? Does it still take 10 seconds to search 10k photos for a single keyword on a MBP 2.16Ghz 2Gb processor? If so, they should be ashamed of themselves.
I upgraded to Aperture 2.0 and I couldn't be happier. This thing is fast fast FAST. I am finally editing my portfolio separating snapshots as sold as 2003 up to now.. I have a lot of work to do but so far Aperture 2.0 has handled the image browsing, selection, etc FAR faster than 1.5 ever did.
One thing people haven't mentioned and I want to also give credit were due: the new Aperture documentation is a DREAM to approach the program. They really nailed getting to use Aperture fast and easy.. considering how complex the whole thing is. Kudos for this. Just three docs- Into with real world "jump into it now" scenarios, the refernece and the keyboard shortcuts.
I upgraded with a online license key, decided not to wait... and got all the docs in PDF electronically.
- Raist
Jonathan, I don't have exact numbers for you, but A2 is a lot faster. Give the trial version a shot :) Raist, yeah, Apple has done a great job with the intro documentation and videos! Derrick also has content at lynda.com, and Ellen and I will be putting together some tutorials as well as video training, too.
Has aperture stopped exporting files as psd when openning with and external editor and handing over the actual RAW file ? Is there support for XMPP ?
Stephane, Aperture is a raw converter, and Apple's shown their commitment to make that RAW converter better--if you want to give the RAW file to another converter, export the master, open it, and import the processed image to Aperture at a later date. For XMP support, I've had a plugin called Lightbox XMP available for a while available here and will be releasing an update for version 2 (that also fixes a crash with some international characters).
Yes, I agree A2 is significantly faster than its predecessor, though, to my observation when it runs on my MBP 2.33C2D with 3GB RAM using Retouch and Spot & Patch, the speed of the Loupe would be reduced noticeably. I assume that should be the graphic card issue. If the pictures are zoomed, the slowness would then be just too much for me to deal with.
Any thoughts? Otherwise, A2 is indeed a definite version upgrade.
Hmm, I haven't noticed that speed issue, although perhaps you've done a lot of spot and patch work to the images you're noticing the slowdown on? Do you have any weird loupe set to the default settings? And try zooming in without the loupe to see if that is ok. I haven't noticed any slowness like this, and my MBP is older than yours with less RAM (and I'm using 21MP RAW files).