David Hassler has been comparing the performance of Aperture 2 with Capture NX for skin tones on this Flickr page.

Tags: Aperture, RAW, Adjustments

RAW 2.0 on the left, RAW 1.1 on the right. What happened to my yellow?

That's a screen shot of a zoomed-in pair of versions of the same master. That's a startling difference. Neither has been adjusted in any way. And I was unable to get the yellow back without affecting the rest of the image. That may be my lack of understanding of the myriad controls, but I thought it would be straight-forward.

Update: The consensus among the comments is that RAW 1.1 is the culprit here and that I should be glad the bug has been fixed.

I am also noticing that Aperture now sharpens thumbnails. That has the effect of making some images look harsher than they really are when viewed in the browser. Again, RAW 2.0 on the left, RAW 1.1 on the right:

But RAW 2.0 does better on the highlights by default.

Tags: Aperture, RAW, Photography, DSLR

After playing with the free trial of Aperture 2.0 yesterday, I purchased the upgrade package and receive my key today. The Aperture menu has an Authorize entry and I could put my key in immediately and get full use of the product.

The next thing I did was update my library. I did a couple of smaller libraries first as a sanity check, and all was well. My 90GB library with 32,000 images took about ten minutes to convert. Inside I can see that the original Aperture database has now been split into two. The original database pretty much doubled in size, while the new one is obviously dedicated to Blobs (binary large objects) and is quite small.

The surprise can when I quit Aperture: quitting took more than 20 minutes! The sheet said Writing Files... and I believe it was updating the database. It also used up an ungodly amount of RAM. I only have 3GB and it sucked up everything it could find. I sampled the Aperture process while it was doing this and saw 16 Exabytes in use -- about 5 billion times what I actually have:

It did finish, and all was well. My guess is that this delay was because I am still on Tiger and this is a Core Data efficiency problem.

Next I looked at the possibility of migrating my images to the new RAW converter:

Entire projects can be converted, or just individual selections. I selected Migrate and got this rather confusing dialog:

Upgrade existing RAW images
This means that of the images selected all the non-RAWs will be left alone. The RAW images will have their RAW converter changed to 2.0 and the versions and previews updated. While I can't go back on this, I can individually set the RAW conversion back to 1.1 from the RAW Fine Tuning adjustment panel if I want:

I can also create new versions manually and compare the RAW 1.1 and RAW 2.0 converters side by side for individual images. Note that none of this affects the masters. The reference to "images" should be to "versions".

Create upgraded versions of existing RAW images
This works exactly the same as Upgrade existing RAW images except that a new version is created (in a stack) with the original and the converter changed to 2.0 for that new version only.

All images
Means all selected RAW images. The other two selections are similar.

I don't recommend updating converters en masse. I am finding that the new converter is quite different, particularly for heavily adjusted images. Here is a quick example: RAW 2.0 is on the left here:

The new RAW converter does do a much better job with highlights.

Tags: Aperture, Updates, Library, Migration, RAW

Aperture 2.0 has shipped. It needs Tiger 10.4.11 or Leopard 10.5.2. It's $200, down $199 from 1.0, and an upgrade is $99. If you purchased 1.5 recently then you can get it for $9.95.

Apple claims 100 new features that I have not had time to read yet.

Apple's Aperture page has many details. including the specs. The features page has some Quick Tours to watch and there are many tutorials. You download the User Manual, and a publication called Exploring Aperture. There is a compatibility checker that will see if your system can run it.

As usual there is active conversation (maybe less whining?) at Apple's Aperture discussion page.

Tags: Aperture, Updates, Anticipation, RAW, DSLR

Hardmac is reporting that 10.5.2 will bring RAW support for Nikon D300 and D3 cameras.

Tags: Nikon, Mac OS X, Updates, RAW, DSLR

Aperture's smart album filtering logic offers only the most basic logical choice: all the conditions set in the dialog or any of the conditions set in the dialog. This means that while there are many different criteria provided, it not apparently possible to combine them in complex ways.

However, due to the fact that there are actually two levels of filtering provided by the thumbnail and grid views, impossible filters can be constructed. For instance, I can find images taken on Wednesday OR Thursday OR Friday AND at between 100 and 130mm focal length. I can find images with the keyword Duck OR Swan OR Goose AND the keyword Lake AND rated two stars and above. And if I want, I can make these type of smart filters specific to a single project or to a collection of projects in a blue folder.

Here is how to combine logic using the two available levels. I'll use the requirement that I need to view all RAW images taken in 2007. To find all RAW images I have to create a filter that ORs together all the different kinds of RAW there can be, since there is no setting for "is RAW".

First I select the library and create a new smart album and call it RAW-2007:

I select the Library before I create the smart album because I want this to work on all my images. The dialog reflects this in its title.

Then I set the match to be ANY and filter to Filename ends with .CR2. I add some more conditions for the file name ending that deal with all the RAW formats I am going encounter:

I could check the Ignore stack groupings box at the bottom if I wanted to look inside stacks. This first filter finds all the RAW images in my library.

I close the dialog and with the smart album still selected I click on the filter icon on the browser, top right.

To set up the second level of filtering I filter on the EXIF capture year and match it to 2007:

I could add more conditions at this point, such as ratings or camera model, if I wished.

To make more filters similar to this one, say for different years, I duplicate the smart album, rename it, and then change the year number in the filter:

This second level of filtering works because each album, project, and smart album remembers its current filter setting. I have to be careful not to change it once I have the thumbnails displayed or else it will not work as expected when I reinvoke it. One way to reduce this risk is to select all the RAW-2007 images and create a new regular album from them (or just use the New Album With Current Images button) Since no more images will be added in 2007, the contents of that static album should never change.

Tags: Aperture, Filtering, Metadata, Smart Albums, RAW, Library

Photon is a RAW workflow utility designed to do one thing well: let me view and sort my images quickly before I import the good ones into a more heavyweight tool like Aperture or Lightroom.

As soon as I put my card into a reader, Photon starts reading and converting RAW files, putting thumbnails into the area on the left. I can start working with images right away: no need to wait for the download to finish. Photon maxed out both my CPUs as it downloaded at about 7MB per second from my USB card reader.

Across the top are stacks: general purpose bins for images. The currently selected stack populates the thumbnail pane, so clicking on a different stack shows me a different set of images. Each card initially goes into its own stack.

To process my images I scroll through the thumbnails with the left and right arrow keys and restack the images using whatever criteria make sense for me. Each stack has a single-key short-cut, called a hotkey (the numbers 1 and 2 in the screen shot above). I can reassign these to any keys I like. 7, 8, 9, X might relate to ratings. I could add a stack called T for trash and another called P for print. If I were shooting a wedding I could assign hotkeys for different locations or people. There is no need to drag and drop images, just pressing the hotkey moves the image to the stack assigned to that key and shows the next image in the viewer. I can process 1000 images with only 1000 key presses this way.

Zooming is simplicity itself: I click on the image and it zooms to 100% with the click point at the center:

I let go, and it returns to a scaled view. To make zooming persistent I can move the switch bottom right.

Once I have my images sorted, I am ready to export the images to disk. Since many of my images have no value and were either moved to a junk stack or skipped over, I only save some of the stacks. I can save the original RAW, or opt to have Photon convert to JPG, TIFF, or a number of other formats. Once done, I am ready to import my surviving images into Aperture or another application or process them further, maybe adding GPS data or keywords.

I found this 1.0 release of Photo to be stable and fast. There are a few rough edges to the interface and a need for refinement in some areas. Photon is short on features -- but that's good. It does what it claims to do well, and there is plenty of functionality that can be added later once customers start telling Green Volcano what they would like to see. The demo version does everything except save stacks.

Tags: Review, Photography, Applications, Aperture, Lightroom, Speed, RAW

I have seen reports that the 40D RAW format is supported by Leopard. Get the Aperture 1.5.6 update as well for the best experience.

Tags: Leopard, Canon, 40D, RAW

Josh and Ellen Anon have a very interesting post and discussion going on at O'Reilly. The topic is this: suppose you have lots and lots of images that were shot as RAW+JPEG in your Aperture library and you no longer want the JPEGs? They can use up a ton of space. How do you get rid of the JPEGs?

The short answer is that you don't. At least not with the tools supplied in Aperture, since Aperture treats the RAW file and the JPEG as a single composite master and won't let you do anything with them individually except create a new master from the JPEG. That new master can be deleted, but it doesn't buy you anything since the original JPEG is still there with the RAW file.

I have as technique that I think is better then Ellen and Josh's. It uses only the Finder and doesn't require any Terminal typing or scripts. And I don't leave any files behind. So without further ado, I'll show you what I do.

[Update: Aperture.fr has an Automator action that achieves the opposite: gets rid of the RAW files and leaves the JPEGs. It does, however, lose any adjustment history. Site is in French]

Here is a project called Yard shoot inside a blue folder:

All three of the images are RAW+JPG. Here they are:

I'll look inside the project to see how it is organized. I open up my Aperture library with control-click and select Show Package Contents, then navigate to the Z folder and then control-click on the Yard shoot project file and select Show Package Contents again. Here are all the files:

I can see the RAW files (CR2) and their JPEG (JPG)sisters. I can also see the apfiles which contain Aperture's information about the image files and the apmaster file that documents the master. What I want to do is to get rid of the JPG files and their apfiles, but leave the CR2 files alone and not leave the apmaster file in a state that will confuse Aperture. Also notice the JPEG files in there that are in the Previews and Thumbnails folders. Those are the previews used for iLife and other applications, and I may want to keep those.

1. Export the project

First I export the project to a temporary location. It looks like this:

2. Open up the project package

It's a package just like the library, so I control-click and select Show Package Contents to view its insides:

3. Find all the JPEG files in the package

I type .JPG into the search box top right and press return:

The Finder window changes to show me the apfiles and the images that match. I can tell the image files apart by looking at the pixel sizes underneath.

4. Select all the files and delete them

If I want to delete all the JPEG files (including the previews) then this step is easy. Select all with command A and delete them with command Delete. Command delete does not appear to do anything at all, but actually it has moved the files to trash. Close the window.

4a. or Select some of the files and delete them

If I want to delete only some of the JPEGs or if I want to leave the previews alone then I have to be selective. By command clicking on all the images that I want to delete, I can make a selection. I'm deleting the JPEGs for images 2563 and 2565 in this case, so I select those.

While it is not critical that the apfiles get deleted too it can be good to be neat. Making this additional selection can be made much easier with the following trick. Press command J to bring up the Finder view options and make sure that This window only is selected. Now select Group By Date and within the group, By Name:

The window changes, but the selections are still there:

Now I can easily command click the apfiles that immediately follow the images already selected and add them to my selection. I do that, and then press command Delete and close the window.

Now if I look in the exported project I see that the JPEGs I wanted gone are gone and the JPEGs I wanted to keep are still there:

5. Reimport the project into Aperture

I create a new blue folder for my project to avoid confusion, and drag the fixed project in:

Now the images I removed the JPEGs from no longer have the option to create a new master from the JPEG:

6. Clean up

After checking the project, I delete the temporary copy and the original. I am done.

Why do all this with an external project? One reason is that it is much safer to operate on a copy of the data than the original, so exporting the project satisfies that urge. The other reason is that the result is much neater. When the project is imported, Aperture does some checking and fixes up the apmaster files.

The original apmaster files have the JPEG listed (originalJPEGFileUUID):

But the fixed and imported image no longer lists the JPEG:

Hopefully Apple will add this facility into a future version of Aperture and we can avoid jumping though all these hoops entirely.

Tags: Aperture, JPEG, RAW, RAW+JPEG, Library, Projects, Deleting

A frustration with buying the latest and greatest DSLR is that Aperture won't support the RAW format straight away. We're forced to wait for an update to add that capability. This is one reason that I went for the Canon 30D rather than the 40D: it's supported and has been for a long time.

Derrick Story at O'Reilly Digital Media has a partial answer: shoot RAW+JPEG and view the JPEGs in Aperture.

Tags: Canon, 40D, G9, RAW, JPEG, Aperture

I'm finding that RAW lets me do some pretty wild things with images. This is a fountain back-lit by the sun:

It came from the image below by setting the Exposure to -2 and the Saturation to +2:

I also took this terrible sunset-ish photo by pointing the camera in direction of the setting sun and clicking the shutter:

By cropping and playing with the adjustments so that they looked like this:

I was able to get a more artistic result. Notice how the exposure is set below -2. How did I do that? The slider only goes to -2, but if you keep clicking on the triangle in the numeric control or type a number in you can go beyond the sliders.

The only real details that are visible are the power lines, so I called it Electric Sunset (click to see full size).

Tags: Aperture, Adjustments, Sunset, RAW, Fountain

Here is a crop (screen capture from Aperture) from an image with a lamp pointing directly at an iPhone. It was shot hand-held at 1/25 at f6.3, ISO 1000 with a Canon 30D and a 17-55 f2.8 IS lens:

I can't see an iPhone -- where is it? It's the big featureless white thing directly below the lamp. It must be an iPhone because it has no buttons. It should have buttons, but again Aperture has washed them out horribly, so there are none to be seen. Now I convert to monochrome using the Monochrome mixer and the image is just the same, not surprisingly:

After much twiddling I get what I am after. It improves the keyboard, the mice, and the curtain too:

Here are my final settings:

Again the technique is pretty much the same as before: Exposure way down, Brightness up, corrections with the Contrast, and Highlights and Shadows for the final touch.

Tags: Aperture, Canon, 30D, Highlights, RAW

I've been playing with all the options on the 30D, and today tried RAW+JPEG to see if it is useful. I didn't like the images it produced, but something interesting did come of it: an exercise in highlight recovery.

The whales were having a tea party on the deck and to record the event I shot one frame of RAW+JPEG. I imported the images and accessed the JPEG sister by control-clicking on an image and selecting New Version from Master JPEG:

Here is a part of the JPEG version:

It's not sharp and I don't like the colors. But I can see detail in the white fin on the left. Now here is the RAW as processed by Aperture:

Sharper and nicer, but the fin is blow out. The blown out pixels are on the right of the histogram:

The JPEG version doesn't have this, so I know it's not inherent in the image:

How do I get the fin back? And why did Aperture do this to me?

First I turn the exposure way down. That brings the highlights back, but it kills the rest of the image. So I move the brightness and saturation up to compensate and then twiddle with the contrast to get a reasonable image with some loss of shadow detail:
Finally I get the shadows back with the Highlights and Shadows control:

And my final result is pretty pleasing:

The bucket is much better and the yellow color can be seen reflecting in other objects. The fin is how I want it, but the rest of the whale is visible too. The histogram looks entirely different now I have finished:

I wonder why this is so hard to do? Did I just use the wrong technique, or is there something missing from Aperture here?

Tags: RAW, Aperture, JPEG, Highlights, Canon, 30D