Working With An External Editor
Very occasionally I need to use an external editor with Aperture. It's rare because I don't do much tweaking of my images, try to remove distortion, composite anything, or create anything artistic with other tools. I actually don't have many other image tools: Photoshop Elements 3 is it. It's PowerPC only, but runs at a quite acceptable speed for my use on this dual Intel iMac.
To use an external editor with Aperture, I must first visit the preferences and choose an application:
The file format choice is between PSD and TIFF. The DPI setting really doesn't matter except in the way it is interpreted by the external editor. It's a number that gives the image an absolute scale and does not affect the number of pixels at all. The image passed to the external editor is always 16 bit. As well as the obvious choices, non-conventional image editors can also be used.
Here is an example of using an external editor. I want to mess with the colors in this picture of a Corvette:
So I control-click the image to open it in Photoshop Elements:
As Photoshop opens, Aperture creates a new master in a stack for me and adds a target-shaped badge so that I know it was created in an external editor:
It's in a stack out of convenience. I can drag it out if I want. The new image is a complete copy with all the same metadata as the original. I adjust my image in Photoshop to get the effect I want:
I don't have all the options in the menus of Photoshop Elements enabled because not all of the filters and effects work with 16 bit images. When I save the image (using Save, not Save As), Aperture sees the file change and updates the thumbnail and the copy in the library:
If I make more adjustments and save again the image is updated again:
I can also convert the image to 8 bit in Photoshop, use some other filters, and save and it will be updated:
Internally Aperture created a new master it the library with the same name as the original, but added (1). This new master is always created in the library, even if the original is referenced:
One thing to watch is that while using Save As in Photoshop will work, it will not update the image in Aperture. The new image has to be imported into Aperture by hand. Apple also has a handy FAQ that describes how to avoid issues with external editors.
To use an external editor with Aperture, I must first visit the preferences and choose an application:
The file format choice is between PSD and TIFF. The DPI setting really doesn't matter except in the way it is interpreted by the external editor. It's a number that gives the image an absolute scale and does not affect the number of pixels at all. The image passed to the external editor is always 16 bit. As well as the obvious choices, non-conventional image editors can also be used.
Here is an example of using an external editor. I want to mess with the colors in this picture of a Corvette:
So I control-click the image to open it in Photoshop Elements:
As Photoshop opens, Aperture creates a new master in a stack for me and adds a target-shaped badge so that I know it was created in an external editor:
It's in a stack out of convenience. I can drag it out if I want. The new image is a complete copy with all the same metadata as the original. I adjust my image in Photoshop to get the effect I want:
I don't have all the options in the menus of Photoshop Elements enabled because not all of the filters and effects work with 16 bit images. When I save the image (using Save, not Save As), Aperture sees the file change and updates the thumbnail and the copy in the library:
If I make more adjustments and save again the image is updated again:
I can also convert the image to 8 bit in Photoshop, use some other filters, and save and it will be updated:
Internally Aperture created a new master it the library with the same name as the original, but added (1). This new master is always created in the library, even if the original is referenced:
One thing to watch is that while using Save As in Photoshop will work, it will not update the image in Aperture. The new image has to be imported into Aperture by hand. Apple also has a handy FAQ that describes how to avoid issues with external editors.
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