One more thing... is Aperture now able to mirror images horizontaly on vertically by itself and not using any means of external tool?

Doesn't look like it.

Unfortunately I don't think so. I too wish they'd add that functionality.

While I am liking what I am experiencing so far, there is one thing that bothers me.

If you crop or straighten an image and then continue doing some image adjustment you will get the beach ball of death.

You are better of doing all your image correction first and as last step your cropping or straightening.

How Aperture was able to leave factory with such an obvious and important flaw? I hope there is a fix soon. That was one of the reason I stopped using Aperture in the past. Which means I am back to cropping in PS. Oh well, the improvement is all other areas are so good that I may wait for the fix.

All in all, Aperture team did a good job listening.

David, I haven't run into that and I did use the crop and straighten tool and then continue editing. However there may be a memory issue. Relaunch Aperture and see if that clears up the issue or if the crop and straighten tools still cause trouble. Please let me know.

Double-clicking centers the sliders ala LR. Are there also corresponding keys for making the retouching brush larger or smaller? LR and CS3 use the square brackets. I've been unable to find an equivalent in Aperture. This is, to my mind, nearly mandatory, in that you can adjust the brush size while hovering over the blemish. Otherwise, you've got to move back to the slider.

Also, is it possible to set a zoom mode to 200%, not 100%? Fullsize simply isn't enough, especially for dust-spotting.

@Marshall: In Aperture, you can adjust the size of the retouching brush by scrolling your mouse wheel: up for larger, down for smaller.

I have a little concern over Aperture 2 and the Nikon D3, anyone else see that the RAW files are so processed that all the work Nikon JPG engine does to get ride of noise is added back in by Aperture 2 to the point the file is almost unuseable without lots of minor adjustments.

My JPG files are far superior all be it missing a little details ??

Anyone e;lse played with this bit yet ?? I have been waiting eagerly and must say the features are nice but the processing engine is not nice at all.

Any thoughts ?

AS Fraser noted, you can change the brush size with a scroll wheel on a mouse or by dragging two fingers together on a trackpad.

The zoom magnification is limited to 100% view but if you need to work in more detail on a specific area, bring up the loupe tool and set it for increased magnification. Keep in mind that the full size view is the best view to judge critical sharpness because of the lack of interpolation and/or magnification artifacts in any program.

Antony, I haven't personally tried the D3 files with Aperture 2 yet - but what I would suggest is that you need to modify the Raw Fine Tuning controls and then save them as a Preset. Try reducing the default sharpening sliders and/or adjusting the boost sliders as well as the Moire (which is a misleading name.)

Ellen:

I just did a test.

First of all, I use a MACPRO 2.66mhz with 4Gig of memory, twice as much as Aperture requirement. No other program was opened and my images are on a different internal HD than the system. It is a RAW image from a D200.

I did some adjustments to the image, then did straighten and went back to do some more adjustment. Now, any adjustment a try... WB, levels, anyone, does not respond real time and I get a brief beach ball from the time I do the adjustment till it actually shows up.

As a matter of fact, even normally, I find that Aperture, while better than 1.5, still not as responsive as LR. I don't know is that is unique to me, but I bought the MAC Pro specifically to run APerture and I haven;t, till this day, been able to be satisfy with the way Aperture runs.

Now, same computer, LR with 40k image library still runs circles around Aperture. And for me, that is very sad because I love Aperture Workflow.

If you have any suggestion, I would love to hear them.

>> if you need to work in more detail on a specific area, bring up the loupe tool and set it for increased magnification

Understood. That's what I do, but Is there a way of using the retouch brush under an area magnified by the loupe. The idea is to better target small spots. Otherwise, it's literally hit or miss. Or loupe, move, aim, mis.

Marshall, are you setting the loupe to follow the cursor?

Marshall, as David suggested (thank you, David!) I think you'll find that if you set the loupe to Focus on Cursor, and then place the loupe out of the way and to whatever magnification you need, that you can get the desired effect. It's not quite as fluent as it would be if the entire image zoomed farther but then again, you don't lose your place either, so there are pros and cons.

David, I think you're running into an Aperture memory issue - I ran into a somewhat similar situation at one point and I'm not certain if it's fixed yet. Please let Apple know about it. When I say a memory issue, I don't mean that your machine is inadequate or having an issue, but that there may be an issue within Aperture itself. Let me know i fyou notice any other issues, OK?

Ellen. Correct me if I'm wrong--or just ham-fisted--but:

1) You need the "glass" of the loupe over the desired area to SEE the higher magnification but. . .

2) If it is, you can't USE the retouch tool on that area because. . . it's under the loupe!

So am I missing something basic? Not casting aspersions (I'm app agnostic. . .really), but in LR you simply crank up the magnification, hover the tool over the spot.. keystroke to size it and, as Stevej would say, BOOM!

Thing is, I much prefer Aperture for the DAM capabilities. Much better. But even accounting for unfamiliarity, and allowing that 2.0 seems much better, Aoperture still is a bit less fluid for edits.

Marshall what you are missing is that you need to set the loupe to "Focus on Cursor" - click on the dropdown menu in the "handle on the loupe" and you'll see the options. That way you can set the loupe anywhere you want it but what will appear within it is the area around your CURSOR, not what's under the loupe. Then it's "just" a matter of eye/hand co-ordination. FWIW, 100% is fine for most of my cloning/healing needs, but occasionally I do zoom in closer. Let me know if you can get it to work for you or if I can be of help.

Thanks Ellen.

How do I let Apple know?

I love Apple DAM and workflow and I want to make it work.

I had to start using LR and although is adequate and a very good tool, I can do more with Aperture.

Ellen. Thanks. I'm frequently missing something. I'm sure it'll work fine when I get home.

Tell me what you think though: Does Aperture, to you, seem more, or less discoverable than other Apple apps or the OS itself? As a longtime Mac user, it sure seems that way to me, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I say this because, In a strange way, if before I knew better, someone had shown me Aperture and LR unlabeled, I'd be tempted to say LR is the Apple app. Weird. And before you say "Yeah, but one's modal and the other ain't," Hitting D, G, or E in LR (For Develop, Grid, and Loupe) don't seem too different from hitting W in Aperture to Develop, Metadata, etc.

Again, I like 'em both, but for different reasons.

Your thoughts?

David, under the Aperture menu choose Aperture feedback. They actually do pay attention! That's why they included right there in the menu in an easy place.

Marshall, I personally think that many things in Aperture are very intuitive and logical and a few, well, let's just say a few of the features are done in a way that makes me able to create and sell training materials! But I think that's true of nearly any software app. I'm actually pretty impressed with the documentation and help materials that Apple is providing with Aperture 2.

Ellen

Ellen,

Are you working on "Aperture Exposed 2.0"? When will be available?

Can you make it solution oriented? (Something like the LR Adventure)

Thanks again.

David, thanks for asking!

Josh and I are busy working to create some training materials but this time they will most likely be a combination of PDFs and videos. And we were thinking precisely along the lines of workflow/solution oriented. We're going to need a few weeks to get the initial materials out. We'll be mentioning it in our blog as well as our websites soon. (ellenanon@mac.com and joshanon@mac.com,)

Also, I'll be starting a series of screencasts on this site about all the Adjustments.

Thanks, Will be looking forward to it.

I loved your book. Clear and concise. I still use it as reference every time I get stumped by Aperture.

Thanks,

PS. I sent the feedback to Apple. Hope to hear something about it.

It is weird because it may be working fine and suddenly it slows down.

I want to make it work because I am loving the images that are coming out of it.

Ellen, any way to revert to the old view--e.g. Projects on left, Adjustments on right?

Maybe it's just me, (it is) but with a 16x10 screen and primarily 4:3 or square images, I've got plenty of room. That and always having the project tree up somehow keeps me oriented. Dumb, but true.

Marshall, you can put the Projects on the left and Adjustments on the right by setting the Inspector to Project and then bring up the floating HUD, set it to ADjustments and place it on the right. The ADjustment panel will be darker (which I actually prefer.)

There's alot of flexibility in Aperture.

Ellen

Ellen, thanks.

Of course, being just shy of Poirot on my intolerance of asymmetry, it may take some--wait for it-- adjustment.

Remember, don't forget to tip your waiter. And try the veal.

Ellen, do you plan on an update to your book?

Larry, thanks for asking about an update for our book.

Josh and I will be creating pdf solution oriented training modules available from our websites and possibly some video training as well. We're going to try to make it very user friendly. We'll blog here about it as well as on our websites just as soon as we have some material up, hopefully within the next couple of weeks. But with NANPA next week, I'm a little behind. it will be soon tho"!

Ellen, that's good to hear. May I suggest that you include some discussion on which order to apply adjustments from the perspective of best speed/performance. The literature so far indicates to apply the adjustments top to bottom but that may not be optimal in terms of processing efficiency.

Thanks,
Larry

Aperture Newbie here. Is it normal that when I use the Straighten tool, I loose sharpeness in my pics? I'm finding a massive loss of sharpness.

Thanks!

Fabian, I have never seen the Straighten tool cause a decrease in sharpness. However what could be happening is that as you straighten the image, Aperture rotates it and zooms in to maintain the aspect ration. As it does so, you're viewing the image at increased magnification. Try using the loupe tool at 100% magnification on the same image before you straighten it. My guess is that you'll discover the picture isn't quite as sharp as you thought it was. However if it's sharp using the loupe tool unstraightened, but not sharp after straightening, then you need to report it to Apple as a bug.

BTW - all newbies are welcome! Make sure to read Part One of my article on using the new adjustment tools and feel free to raise questions.

Ellen