O'Reilly Digital Media

I’m sure you’ve heard the news that Microsoft must pay $1.5B as the result of a lawsuit brought by Alcatel-Lucent. You can read about it, but it sure is a good lesson. You better do your homework before licensing patents.

I encourage everyone to look into the use of Vorbis Ogg format. First, it sounds very good. And it’s patent free! From the xiph website:

Ogg Vorbis is a fully open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free, general-purpose compressed audio format for mid to high quality (8kHz-48.0kHz, 16+ bit, polyphonic) audio and music at fixed and variable bitrates from 16 to 128 kbps/channel. This places Vorbis in the same competitive class as audio representations such as MPEG-4 (AAC), and similar to, but higher performance than MPEG-1/2 audio layer 3, MPEG-4 audio (TwinVQ), WMA and PAC.

Why don’ t podcasters use this format? It’s free, and it’s easy for users to obtain the decoder if they don’t already have it. In fact, why doesn’t everyone use this format? (Heck, even my company’s demos are in MP3… must change that.)

I love it when the real world meets the book-writing world, as it did last week when I was finishing up the slideshow chapter for my O’Reilly Lightroom Adventure book

Derrick Story was down from Sebastopol and we were in my studio office organizing a new Adventure slide show for an on-line presentation. We were using Lightoom’s Slideshow module, of course. With the module it’s really easy to create a simple, yet elegant, slideshow complete with transitions and sound.

Aperture gives photographers a chance to make quick, easy and attractive web sites full of photos. But for some photographers, the standard choices that ship with Aperture are not enough.

You can build your own templates or customize the ones that ship with Aperture if you know HTML and/or CSS. (NOTE: If you want to learn HTML or CSS, O’Reilly offers several top-notch books on this subject.)

Here’s a very basic primer on how to make your own Aperture web templates.

As I’ve written about before, in the last few months I’ve been using lots of different tools to work with my digital photographs. For example, I’ve been maintaining my main image library in Aperture, but using Lightroom to create large prints with. With the recent release of the Photoshop CS3 beta and the full release of Lightroom 1.0, I’ve been working with multiple applications even more. And the more I work with all of these applications together, the more that I wish that the incredibly important metadata about these photographs was fully interoperable across the set of applications I use.

Adobe’s applications, most notably Lightroom, Bridge, and Photoshop, are fully interoperable with RAW file metadata. When you rank and keyword images in Lightroom, that information is reflected in Bridge. This is accomplished not through some secret API sauce on Adobe’s part, but instead through XMP metadata. This metadata is either embedded into the image files, or in the case of camera RAW files such as NEFs and CR2s, as side car XMP files.

It takes a lot of time to add metadata to your photographs. This is important stuff that you don’t want to have to perform time and time again. It’s information that should be able to travel with your image data when you hand it off to somebody else. It’s data that needs to be preserved for the future. And, it shouldn’t be locked up in any one application’s silo. It’s just data.

So, given all of that, my number 2 feature request for the next version of Aperture—right behind performance improvements—is full support for XMP in externally referenced files. When a keyword is added to an image in Aperture, it should be written to an XMP sidecar file so that if you open your images in Lightroom or Bridge, all of your metadata is right there. I don’t expect, of course, for Aperture to support Adobe Camera Raw settings. That would be asking for Aperture to emulate exactly how Adobe Camera Raw works. But, for keywords and IPTC metadata, it would be a much appreciated feature addition.

It’s a big decision when you decide on an application and platform to manage your pictures. In a few years time, your picture library might reach thousands upon thousands of images, and if the pictures are all tagged with keywords and collections, you will have invested a substantial amount of time in your photo library.

There’s also the possibility that the application you use to manage your pictures might be discontinued, or maybe you just want to make a change, but discover a problem if the new program is not based on open standards. To organize your collection from scratch is hardly an option and if the application is not based on XMP/IPTC standards, nor has some advanced export functions, you are in a difficult situation. Most advanced DAM applications write information about the picture (Keywords, rating, collections) into XMP, and if using DNG, into the file itself. This is helpful for enabling different applications to work together in a workflow or switch from one DAM application to another.

Selecting a DAM application that isn’t dependant on one platform is important in my opinion. I have used applications like IMatch and IDimager (both very powerful DAM applications) in the past and both are Windows only applications. Aperture is only for Mac. Lightroom and IView are for both platforms.

Until recently I haven’t thought much about this multi platform compatibility because I have been Windows user for the last 15 years, and the Mac platform hasn’t really been something I’ve been interested in, and therefore almost never thought about. I work as a software engineer, and the platform I develop for is Windows, so Mac has never been an option for me. When Apple converted to Intel processors things changed because now people can use both Windows and Mac on the same machine. This is a masterstroke by Apple. I have been reading a lot about Mac OS, and trying out the machines. I’m totally hooked on Mac and the Mac community now. I have decided to stop using Windows outside work and get on the Mac bandwagon. Vista doesn’t interest me at all. Mac OS X is superior in my opinion, and I also really like the design of the Apple machines. I haven’t been this excited about computers for 10-15 years - I almost feel liberated :-)

Soon I will move my image gallery over to the Mac, and thankfully all my pictures are in Lightroom and IView, which are both available for Apple. So it shouldn’t be that much of a problem. It wouldn’t be as easy moving the other direction for people using Mac and Aperture - but that’s probably not much of an issue…

This morning I woke up to make an 8 a.m. bus ride to a couple of Dominica’s waterfalls. First on the list was a nature hike along a river and up a mountain to the Sari Sari Falls. The waterfall is about 75 feet tall (I would guess by looking at it) and it empties into a pretty nice pool where you can swim and enjoy the views.

I’m not sure how I managed to do it, but I made it through the entire day without dumping my camera in the river. My boots didn’t fair so well, and they are currently drying on the porch.

For the trip, I packed light, carrying my Canon 20D, 10-22mm, and 70-200 IS. I packed all the gear and a water bottle into a day pack, and usually had the SLR strung around my shoulder and neck while hiking. The next time I go, I will probably pack/bring my tripod. I have one of the older steel Gitzo tripods and while it is pretty much an indestructible beast of a tripod, it is pretty heavy, so I left it home this time.

We spent the day climbing up muddy rocks and wading through rivers. Man, I really love my job! In the end I shot a couple hundred frames, and got to swim under two waterfalls.

I rarely have to rotate images anymore. Usually, my camera is smart enough to detect its orientation and automatically rotates my images for me. When Nikon and Canon started implementing this technology into their DSLRs I jumped for joy. What a timesaver! However, there are times when the auto-rotate function doesn’t quite work. For instance, today I thought it would be cool to get some low angle shots while standing in the river. Instead of submerging my battery pack and frying my camera, I decided to turn the camera upside-own to get as close to the water as possible.

When I got back to my apartment, I began importing cards and cleaning my gear. As I started sorting through my images in Lightroom, I began to notice a few details about the user interface. Let me preface this by saying that most of the problems with the interface are just things I need to learn, but as I have been saying all along, I think that intuitiveness is an important component of an intelligently designed and useful user interface.

For example, to rotate those upside-own images all at once I have to be in Lightroom’s Library module and in Grid view. If you are in any other module, or looking in another view mode in the Library module, you can only rotate images one at a time. On top of this, the rotate arrows that are present in the Grid view thumbnails aren’t present in the film strip or anywhere else. So, you have to use either the keyboard shortcut, or a menu option to rotate anything at all outside the Grid view. In Aperture there is always a rotate left or right button on the bottom bar, and it can be used to rotate a single image or a set of images, regardless of where you are in the program. I suppose it might sound like I’m really nitpicking here, but I have to say, it just reinforces my main problem with Lightroom: the modules.

I really don’t like having to think about where I am in a program in order to do something as simple as rotating a set of images. I will save most of my opinions about the modules for my upcoming summary article, but in a nutshell, I really think the whole concept of a step by step workflow is a tired and linear way of thinking. Am I alone here?

To see a small set of images from today’s trip, check out the link here.

MTV recently turned 25. The cultural behemoth has morphed many times since its initial coming out, when it woke up a whole generation to the power of music videos, and played a key role in music discovery and promotion. To this day, there is no underestimating the power of MTV’s brand; it’s one of the most widely recognized around the globe. However its value and import in the US music market in 2007 remains less than clear. The original MTV audience has become the VH-1 crowd as it has aged. What is clear is the importance of digital media and distribution to MTV’s future; indeed the hot topic this year pivots around distribution of digital video on the Net as well as on portable, mobile devices.

So what is the new MTV (if there is one entity)? Arguably you could say it’s You Tube — with the added twist of allowing the consumers not only to become content creators but also to be their own programmers (of a vast catalog of content, branded and user-generated). Or perhaps Joost (formerly known as The Venice Project). But regardless of who it is, the cat’s out of the bag in terms of empowering artists and consumers themselves to create, distribute, and program their desired content. This of course is enabled by digital media technologies, sites like You Tube & others, and the fact that this generation (known as “The Millennials”) are demanding the ability to do all of those things now.

What’s next for MTV itself as a result? In a word. Darwinism — it must adapt to the needs and demands of this new generation, harness its incredible archival vault & find a way to monetize it, morph in a new direction that the power of their brand allows it to do, or die trying (somehow I don’t think the latter will happen). Stay tuned as the MTV (de)-evolution continues.

While reading one of the comments on Micah’s Aperture vs. Lightroom post last week on the Inside Aperture website I came across a sweet trick to Auto Synch the develop module adjustments in Lightroom. I had never heard about this trick before and I was blown away that I learned it on the Aperture website. Looks like we are all learning a lot from this Lightroom vs. Aperture comparison.

First, in Lightroom’s Develop module the normal way to copy develop settings is to adjust one image and then select the other(s) you want to develop and hit the Synch button in the lower right panel. Very simple and straight forward.

But here is the Auto Synch feature - if you select the images you want to work on as a group then you can hold down the Command (Mac) or Control (PC) key as you click the Synch button and it turns to Auto Synch as in the image below.

Now whenever you make a change to any of the images in your group it changes the settings for all for the selected images in the group automatically. I couldn’t even find this trick in the Lightroom instruction manual so I thought this might be pretty interesting for those of you that shoot lots of similars and want to speed up your workflow.

In comparison, Aperture uses the lift and stamp tools to synch image settings. The lift and stamp tools have a lot more versatility than the Synch button in Lightroom because you can pick and choose what settings you wish to apply to other images. While that is all fine and dandy it is a slower process - that is the price of versatility. Alternatively, you can use Shift-CMD-C to copy your settings and Shift-CMD-V to past them into another image. And you can also lift from one image and select a group of images to stamp those settings to which speeds up the process. I have to say that both methods in Aperture seem overly complex to me for what should be a really simple process and is in Lightroom.

I’m not trying to knock Aperture here - just telling it like it is. At the moment, I am in the process of writing up a full article to wrap up my Lightroom vs. Aperture comparison and today I spent two hours trying to figure out some fairly simple stuff in Aperture. I’ll have a lot more to say in the upcoming article. I’m trying to not form my opinion of Aperture too quickly but the more time I spend reading the user manual trying to figure out things that should be fairly obvious the less excited I get about using the application. Just my opinion….

Adios, Michael Clark

It was reported some time ago that many Aperture users were seeing strange lines on their images after exporting to JPG. While it seemed that this problem was solved in v1.5.1 it seems that some people (including myself) are still having the problem from time to time.

The fix seems to be to download the Apple Digital Camera RAW Support Update 1.0.1 (Universal) which can be found HERE.

I downloaded the update, installed it and then did a test batch export and I did not see any nasty lines in my images. If you are having this issue, downloading the update seems like the thing to do.

Until next time,

Keep shooting.

Allen Rockwell
Allen Rockwell Photography

Well, it has been a really nice weekend here in Dominica. Yesterday I spent some time volunteering at the Portsmouth library where I did my best to tutor some kids in math. Math was never my strongest subject, but I guess after taking so many classes, multiple times, the basics eventually sank in. We practiced multiplying decimals, and when I got home I used my renewed skills to calculate what my 17-35mm lens would equate to on the new Canon EOS 1D Mark III.

I have also been working with Lightroom and Aperture quite a bit this weekend. I am still trying to figure out some key concepts in Lightroom, and I have even learned a few new tricks in Aperture.

Today I spent some time playing with the Export functions of both programs. I know this might seem like a pretty lame topic, but there are some differences that I thought stood out to me. A couple are items that are just plain missing (or at least I have yet to find them) and I also have a few gripes here and there about intuitiveness, a topic I keep coming back to.

First and foremost, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to export a Master in Lightroom. Am I missing something here? All I want to do is select a bunch of images and send their Master files to a folder on my desktop. Now, I know I can easily click Show in Finder, but that only works for one file at a time. I also know that I can use the Folder menu in the left hand side panel to move images around, but then we are taking about the original copies, which I want to keep in place.

I looked in the Export dialog box and the best I could come up with was to export in the DNG format. I even searched through the help file and came up empty handed. So, please, if any of you Lightroom aficionados out there know how to do this, please let me know. It seems like it should be a pretty obvious thing, but I can’t find it.

One smaller detail I noticed is that Lightroom is shipped with three Export presets. Now, I know I am going to have a pretty easy time creating all of the custom presets I can think of in Lightroom, but it would have been nice to have a few of the basics set up for me right out of the box.
In Aperture I really like the fact that I can set Black Point Compensation, and add a Gamma Adjustment on export. These two features are especially useful when dealing with clients, as you really never know what a clients workstation will consist of. I also noticed these options were missing in the Print module, where they might be even more important. It’s true, a good color management system should be able to make these settings obsolete, but in the real world, (regardless of how many times you calibrate your setup) sometimes a print just needs a little more contrast than what we are seeing on screen.

On the topic of user intuition, I really like the way Aperture presents its Size To settings in the Export Presets dialog box. It’s one of those things that just makes perfect sense to me. In Aperture you simply select Original Size, one of three Fit Within options, or Percent of Original. With the Fit Within setting you essentially pick the size of the box you want your image to fit within, and Aperture takes care of the rest.

Of course you can do a Fit Within with Lightroom as well, it just doesn’t really say so. In Lightoom you click Constrain Maximum Size and then you just fill in the width and height. All they need to do here is reword the dialog and I would be happy. Once I realized what they were trying to say, I was all set, but it would have been nice if it was more clear. I mean, I’m talking about real world user friendliness, and this stuff may seem obvious to everyone else, but the less I have to think about a setting, the less I have to worry if I pushed the wrong button or not. In the end, all these little details add up.

I do like Lightroom’s implementation of the After Export function. I can see how this could come in handy but I have yet to really try it. From what I can tell, I can essentially invoke a script such as an Automator Workflow, or ActionScript with this functionality. But, this brings me to another point. Where are the Automator Actions? Well, I am sure Adobe will ship a few actions in the near future, but I haven’t heard of any available at the moment.

So, tonight, I hope I am not complaining too much about the minor details. The truth is, it is these little minutia that can make or break a piece of software for me. As they say, the devil is in the details!

Tomorrow morning I am waking up bright and early for a day long trip out to the Atlantic side of the island, where I will be hiking up to the Sari Sari falls. Once I get back I will hopefully have enough time to work up some of the shoot into a gallery you all can look at, before beginning to write up my synopsis of this series. Over all, I have had a great time exploring both of these really amazing programs, and I feel like I have only scratched the surface. So, I wanted to give a big thanks to all of you who have followed along and left your comments. We aren’t finished yet!

According to the Associated Press, BitTorrent Inc will start selling TV shows and renting movies tomorrow. The BitTorrent Entertainment Network will include films from Warner Bros, Paramount, Fox, MGM and Lionsgate. TV shows will include 24 and Punk’d. For $1.99 you can “own” a copy of a TV show. For $3.99 you can “rent” a film. Right now, there’s not much to see over at BitTorrent except the following screen. More as it develops.

I’ve been shooting with the Canon EOS 20D and 30D for quite a while now and I do a lot of sports shooting. While I think these camera bodies are great performers for the money I do have a few features on my wish list… especially for sports shooting. I’ve been wishing for a few more megapixes and more shots per second.

…Well, it looks like Canon have read my mind and are going to release a camera that blows the doors of everything else on the market (IMHO).

The Canon EOS 1D Mark III is a 10.1 MegaPixel camera that shoots at an amazing 10 frames per second with burst up to 110 shots in jpeg mode and 30 shots in RAW mode. Dual DIGIC III Image Processors will offer fine detail, natural color reproduction and high-speed performance. The Mark III features a 3″ LCD screen (WOW!) and a new “Live View” mode where the photographer can compose and shoot directly from the LCD monitor. Live View can also be used remotely, via a computer through the 1D Mark III’s USB connection, or wirelessly or via Ethernet with the optional Wireless File Transmitter WFT-E2A attached.

Start saving your money now, this camera should hit the streets in April of this year and be somewhere just under $4000

For more information Click Here

Until next time,

Keep shooting.

Allen Rockwell
Allen Rockwell Photography

I am officially overwhelmed by the comments I have been receiving. The discussions on the last two posts have been great, and some really great points have been brought up. I hope to answer some of your questions when I have the time, and I have already gotten a number of ideas for future posts based on your feedback.

I was glad to see a that many of you caught on to my approach for evaluating the RAW processing abilities of both products. My methods are by no means scientific, and not meant to draw any real conclusions. I’m really just trying to point out how a software package, and all of its variables can influence the outcome of my work. These things are pretty subjective and always evolving as I learn the software and gain experience using it in the field.

Today I would like to talk about the Web Gallery features of Lightroom and Aperture. I realize I am sort of skipping over two modules in Lightroom, but the Web Gallery feature is something I use quite often in my work, and so it is one apsect I am very interested in exploring.

When I first began using Lightroom I was very excited about its Web module. Mostly, I think I was drawn in by the fact that the Web module in LR offered a number of Flash gallery templates. A few of them were pretty nice looking to boot. But after playing with the Web module in LR for a few hours, I realized something that I’m not sure I can get over. I can’t save a gallery. Ok, let me be clear. I CAN export my gallery, and I can even upload it to an FTP site directly from within LR (nice) but the most I can do to save the work I have done is create a preset. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I can’t find any way to save the gallery after spending the time organizing and ordering the shoot.

In Aperture, every Web Gallery is an item that resides inside an Aperture Project. I can have as many web galleries as I want and they can draw on images from any number of Projects. To me this is a really great idea. Not only can I, at any time, go back and work on an old gallery, I can also export that gallery as part of the Aperture Project so that it will migrate to a second computer, or even to a client who uses Aperture.

Now that I have worked my way through many of the modules in LR I have noticed something inherent about Aperture that I really miss. In LR, I must make adjustments to my images in the Develop module–no exceptions. I think a couple of comments touched on this in the last post, but now I am starting to see some of the drawbacks first hand. One thing I really like about Aperture is the ability to make adjustments to images from pretty much anywhere in the program, including while editing a Web Gallery. With Aperture, all I have to do is hit the H key and I can make adjustments to images right there in the contact sheet of a web gallery. This is very useful for making sure all of my images look balanced when displayed together on the galleries index view. I also really like how I can drag and drop images around the web galleries contact sheet to reorder the shoot. I know I can change the order in LR, but it has to be done by moving the images in the filmstrip along the bottom–a minor detail, but something I noticed.

To be fair, I wish that Aperture had a few more themes to choose from for Web Galleries. Flash output would be pretty nice too, but I do appreciate the simple black template. This theme, with the right metadata, makes a quick and dirty web gallery that I am perfectly happy sending to a client for review.

Yesterday I was supposed to shoot some food shots for a local restaurant, but they weren’t available, so hopefully I will be heading over there to work on it today. So, I ended up taking a walk through Portsmouth again and getting some nice evening light photos of the boats and fisherman, as well as a couple of locals. I produced this gallery in a matter of minutes with Aperture and you can see it online here.

Thanks again for all your great (and lengthy) comments on the last post. I am eager to hear your thoughts on the Web Gallery stuff. What works for you? Which is more appealing? Are Flash based galleries mandatory in your workflow? I want to know!

I have long admired the Loupe tool in Aperture. The first time I ever saw Aperture demonstrated the first thing that caught my eye was the Loupe tool and I was practically drooling when I saw it. As you can see in the image below, it magnifies whatever part of an image you mouse over. And now in the latest version of Aperture (1.5.2) you can use it in “Centered Loupe” mode. This allows one to place the loupe off to the side out of the way and anything you mouse over shows up in the loupe. It’s super cool and you can even use it with the images aligned in a grid pattern (browser mode) to loupe thumbnail images.

When I first starting using it I was disappointed to see that it would slow down after about 5 or 6 images (while louping thumbnails) and I’d have to wait for the image to load into the loupe at 100%. That was a drag.

Before Lightroom the biggest slow down in my workflow was checking images at a 100% for critical sharpness. Now, before you start critiquing my camera holding skills remember I shoot adventure sports - and a lot of the time I am hanging off a 2,000-foot cliff or shooting mountain bikers whizzing by at 40 mph. So it isn’t a guarantee that every image will be critically sharp - most are, but I like to cull out those that aren’t so they never make it to my clients.

With Lightroom the loupe isn’t really a loupe like it is in Aperture. Loupe view in Lightroom zooms the image to 100% just by clicking on the image. And you can move around the image easily by grabbing it and pulling whichever way you want to go. When I first starting using Lightroom I was wishing for a Loupe tool like Aperture, but since I’ve found Lightroom’s Loupe view to be much more useful than the loupe in Aperture.

I found that a key step to using the loupe view in Lightroom was to make sure you render the 1:1 previews - this speeds up the loupe function. Now to check critical sharpness I can just start with the first image in a shoot, go to the 1:1 loupe view and use the arrow keys to cruise through the images. On my G5 tower with 4 GB of RAM I can crank through hundreds of images and check their sharpness in a matter of minutes. Every once in a while Lightroom pauses to take a breath but I am very impressed with how fast it can load the 1:1 previews. And I like the fact that Lightroom shows me a lot more of the image because I can maximize the browser space by clicking off some or all of the panels as I scroll through the images as in the image below.

In reality the Loupe view in Lightroom is more equivalent to the Zoom view in Aperture with one small difference - in Lightroom when you grab the image to maneuver around it works very well - in Aperture it seems to jump all over the place and in my experience it is very hard to center it exactly where you want. Aperture has a little navigator window you can use in zoom view as well but that is even more difficult to use.

So while I still think the Loupe in Aperture is one of the coolest tools in any RAW processing or image editing software applications, for my workflow the Lightroom loupe view works extremely well.

That’s it for now. Feel free to comment and I’ll reply if I get a chance….

Adios, Michael

Welcome to this week’s edition of Friday Napster Freebies. These un-DRMed MP3 files are free for a limited time and can be downloaded from just about any country. Enjoy!

“Within a Mile of Home” by Flogging Molly
This genre-defying septet got its start playing countless gigs at the L.A. bar Molly Malone’s. They’ve been compared to raucous Irish rockers The Pogues and Black 47. Hear them for yourself with this live track, taken from the documentary Whiskey on a Sunday.

“The Strikes” by Nakatomi Plaza
Based in Brooklyn, NY, this punk-rock trio has embraced the DIY ethic for the past eight years, touring and promoting themselves relentlessly. Today’s free download is from their Frog Octopus Wolf EP, a precursor to their upcoming third album, Unsettled.

“The Upper Ten/The Lower Five” by Ghost Stories
After years of playing in different groups, musician Ron Lewis was ready for his own project. The resulting album, Quixoticism, was nearly seven years in the making. Its songs, including today’s free download, were recorded in an empty house on just eight tracks.

“Sultanas de Merkaillo” by Ojos de Brujo
Barcelona’s internationally renowned flamenco collective has expanded their audience by fusing different styles of music, including hip-hop, rock, and reggae/dub. These influences can be heard on their new album, Techari, which includes today’s free download.

“Somewhere Girls” by Secretary Bird
Some may know singer-songwriter Mike Semple from his work with Friends of Dean Martinez and the score to Fast Food Nation. His current band, Secretary Bird, is likely to win him even more fans with this title track to their new album.

“Sweet Weepin’ Jesus” by Kemp Harris
In the tradition of stark, thematically driven albums such as Sam Cooke’s Night Beat, singer-songwriter Kemp Harris’ sophomore release, Edenton, is a journey back to the raw-boned gospel, R&B, and blues of his youth.

“Weapon X” by X-Clan
The legendary hip-hop group is back with a new album after years away from the scene following the death of one of their own. Return From Mecca continues the Clan’s stream-of-conciousness style and puts commercial hip-hop stereotyping on notice.

The many ways to organize photos in Lightroom include not only folders and keywords, which I covered in Part 1 of this post. Take things a step further and try out collections, Quick Collections, and stacks. Here’s a quick guide to what these features are and when to use them:

Collections–A collection is a virtual group that can include any imported photo, regardless of where it’s located or what keywords you’ve assigned it. Collections come in handy for organizing photos by project. Think use, rather than subject matter, when you’re creating a collection. For example, you might want to collect an assortment of unrelated photos to include in a Web Photo Gallery, a contact sheet, or a slideshow you’re creating in another Lightroom module. A library can hold multiple collections, and the same photo can belong to more than one collection.

Quick Collection–A Quick Collection is a one-off, temporary collection. You can have only one Quick Collection at a time. Use it to group items for immediate, short-term use. If you want to preserve a Quick Collection, choose File > Save Quick Collection to save it as a regular collection.

Stacks–A stack is a virtual pile of photos. When photos are piled into a stack, you see only the one at the top. This saves viewing space, and helps keep track of similar shots. Stacks are useful for grouping multiple exposures of the same subject, and for grouping original photos with their virtual edited copies.

Armed with Parts 1 and 2 of this quick guide to Lightroom’s organizing features, you’re ready to go out and get serious about organizing your photos. Let us know how it goes by adding your comment below.

I am a life long Nikon photographer and I believe in using Nikon products whenever possible. I don’t really feel like I’m cheating on Nikon by using Adobe products like Photoshop CS and Photoshop Lightroom though, because Nikon does not have an equivalent product available.

Some photographers may argue that Capture NX is a competing product, but I consider it to be a complimentary product, one that on occasion allows Nikon users to squeeze that important little bit extra, out of their NEF (RAW) image files.

Nikon Capture NX is a very good RAW image file converter (for Nikon NEF (RAW) images only) and has a few image editing capabilities that can not be found in either Photoshop Lightroom or Photoshop CS. The most outstanding feature of Capture NX is what Nikon refers to as their U Point technology which uses Control Points to selectively adjust the size, brightness, contrast, saturation and hue of a particular color or area of an image.

There are basically two ways to use the combined power of Lightroom and Capture NX.

1. Process the NEF image file in Capture NX first, convert the edited file to TIFF and then import into Lightroom.

2. Open the unprocessed NEF image file in Lightroom first and edit in the Lightroom Edit Module, when you come across a situation that is better handled in Capture NX, access the Edit in Capture command in the Photo Menu (you have to select Capture NX as an alternate external Editor first) and edit in Capture NX.

Last week I photographed a large outdoor Buddha statue but unfortunately the sun was so bright and high, that half of the face of the Buddha was in a deep shadow. Never mind I figured it would make a good story for this website.

I opened the unedited NEF file in Lightroom 1.0 but I was not satisfied with the adjustments I could make in the Lightroom Develop Module, so I decided to apply the Edit in Capture command, which made a TIFF copy of the original RAW file and sent the TIFF image to Capture NX (1.1) for editing. After the editing process I Saved (not Save As) the image, which was then automatically picked up by Lightroom and placed in a Stack with the original RAW image file.

TIFF and JPEG files can be adjusted using U Point - Control Points in Nikon Capture NX but the image will in a sense be flattened (to borrow an Adobe Photoshop CS term) when it is saved and can not be re-edited without introducing new Control Points. Nikon NEF (RAW) files can be saved with the previous U Point settings available, the next time you open the file.

The process in Capture NX was fairly straight forward

1. Created a Control Point in the shadow area of the Buddhas face

2. Increased the brightness in that Control Point area

3. Duplicated that Control Point a number of times

4. Placed the Control Points in the areas that you consider to be too dark

5. Adjusted the individual control points for a natural look

By making a number of small Control Point areas I was able to adjust the shadow area without affecting the adjacent highlights.

I made a bonehead mistake yesterday by shooting a series of landscape shots with the white balance set on “custom” from the night before. Fortunately, I shoot in Raw, so I was able to correct the blunder quickly in Aperture.

I begin my path to redemption by selecting the “Daylight” white balance preset that I created in the Adjustments HUD, then applying it to the first image in the series. With the photo still selected, I used Shift-CMD-C to copy my adjustment. Then I selected the other images in the series and used Shift-CMD-V to add the Daylight white balance setting to them.

Within just minutes, I’ve corrected an otherwise disasterous mistake that would have ruined my day back in the “Jpeg/destructive editing” dark years.

Do you ever wish that you could just quickly look through Library’s Grid view for photos of a particular subject at a particular angle… or even just photos of a particular subject? Then you wouldn’t have to go through dozens or hundreds of pictures when you were just looking for a particular type of thing.

Of course, the most common way to take care of that problem is to just drag all the similar pictures into a sequence by “light-tabling” them. To do that, first make sure that you’re in User Order sorting. Then you just click the center of the picture to select it, then drag it next to another similar picture in the grid. The original thumbnail will appear in the new location. To speed things along, you can Cmd/Ctrl + Select any other related pictures you see in that one view of the Grid and drag them next to another of the similar pictures. After repeating that process a few time, you have groups of similar or related pictures that are all side-by-side.

The problem is, you may still have to scroll through several grid screens (or spend a lot of time dragging the film strip back and forth) to find the picture group you’re looking for. To cure that problem, all you have to do is to select any group of related picture and then designate that selection as a stack. The first picture in the selection will be the picture you see in that grid panel. The others will be stacked beneath it. So now you just see one picture representing the whole group, which could be hundreds of pictures.

Here’s all you have to do to get it that way: In the Grid view, follow the instructions in the first paragraph to drag all the photos into the groups that you want to have in each stack.Next, select all the photos and press Cmd/Ctrl + G. All the pictures will be hidden beneath the first picture and you’ll see a small number in the upper right corner of the picture. Then, later, if you want to find a particualr picture, just expand the stack by .

Now any time you want to see all the pictures in the stack, just tap the letter S. You’ll see all the images side-by-side in the grid.

You can also have stacks within stacks. That’s important because Lightroom can be asked to automatically stack images that are variants of the same image, such as multiple “exposures” of a RAW file or files that you’ve done additional processing for in Photoshop. You’ll probably want it to work that way. All you have to do is to include that automatically made stack within the stack you make by subject type. When you open the subject-type stack, you’ll see the individual stack and you can then open them.

One of my favorite added benefits of shooting in RAW format is the ability to set my camera to Black and White and still have the color information preserved. To do this, all I do (on my Canon 20D) is pick the B/W Parameter setting. As long as I am working in RAW format, all I am really doing is “viewing” the picture in B/W on the LCD screen. I’m actually still shooting in color.

This really helps me to visualize what the image would look like if I were shooting in B/W. It helps me to see the differences in tone, and allows me to “think” in black and white. Later, if I decide I really needed a color image, I still have the RAW file and all is well.

Both Aperture and Lightroom (and I suspect a number of other applications) handle the B/W images from my 20D in essentially the same way. When I begin to import the images I see the thumbnails in B/W. Then after a bit of processing time goes by, they all turn to color. I don’t know exactly what is happening here, because, well, I never cared to ask. But, I presume the RAW file’s built in thumbnail is coming up first in B/W, and then Aperture and Lightroom are processing their own thumbnails and ignoring the B/W setting.

To be honest, I’m totally fine with this behavior. If I really did want B/W, all I would need to do would be to change them back to B/W in Aperture or Lightroom. This is where things begin to differ a little in the two apps.

In Aperture, I can convert an image to B/W in a number of ways. There is no obvious “Turn me to B/W” button that I know of, but I know from my experiences a number of easy ways to go grayscale. I can either turn my saturation down to zero, or I can select the Monochrome Mixer option (found in the + menu at the top of the Adjustments Inspector), or I could pick one of the B/W presets such as Sepia Tone. Once I have my first image set to B/W, I can use the Lift and Stamp tools to easily apply the setting to the whole shoot.

In Lightroom getting to this same point is a little more obvious. Select an image, click the Develop Module, and under Treatment, select Grayscale. Then, to apply this setting to the rest of the shoot, just hit Command-A to select the entire set, and hit Sync… at the bottom of the right hand Panel.

I’m going to stop here to make two observations. First, in Lightroom, when I click Grayscale, I get something very close to what I was looking at on the back of my camera. In Aperture, if I hit Monochrome Mixer, I get a pretty flat B/W image. Second, Aperture takes its good sweet time rendering the thumbnails back to B/W on my MacBook Pro. I’m not really sure why this is such an intensive process for Aperture, but it does take some time. What I notice in Lightroom is that there is a good deal of processing going on there as well, but LR seems to be just a little more graceful about it. When I scroll down in Grid View in LR, the color thumbs on the screen quickly convert back to B/W, whereas in Aperture it seems to be converting images with some unknown agenda. At first I thought it was going from the bottom up, but then it seemed to be processing them at random. I’m still not sure what is going on with that.

I told myself I wasn’t going to be doing any speed comparisons here, but I can’t help myself. LR is just faster in this regard, and for those of you who are wondering, I began the week with empty libraries for both Aperture and Lightroom and have added the same number of images to both libraries.

Okay, enough about speed. Lets move on to B/W processing. First I should say, I am not a real pro at making B/W conversions. I have been shown a thing or two by colleagues, and I have made a few B/W prints from digital files, but that’s about it. Color has pretty much dominated my work for the past few years. That said, I do love B/W and have been having a ball today, rediscovering how much fun it is.

So I began by importing an image set that I shot of a small party in my neighborhood into Lightroom. I shot the party with the B/W setting on my 20D (mostly for the fun of showing the pics on the LCD to the guests) and after the color versions showed up in LR I followed the steps to convert them back to B/W that I mentioned above. I also imported the same images into Aperture and applied the Monochrome Mixer to the set using the Lift and Stamp tools.

My goal here was to pick an image I liked and see what I could do with the various controls in B/W. Just like yesterday’s post, I am mostly interested in which program’s controls are more intuitive, and which seem to lead me down the path towards a nice image.

Lets begin with Aperture. First off, the picture I selected turned out to not be from the party at all, but instead a picture of our new puppy on our porch that I shot just before leaving for the party. What is interesting about this picture is that it was shot at ISO 800 for a half second. I just set the camera on the ground and hoped the puppy wouldn’t move too much. The second reason I thought this might make an interesting example is due to the fact that the lighting was all coming from a couple of overhead fluorescent tubes that had been covered in a green gel. So for all practical purposes, the light was already monochromatic. I don’t expect you will find yourselves in a similar situation anytime soon, but, one of the things I really like to work with is odd lighting, and I really enjoy trying to make the best out of a less than ideal circumstance. In fact it was the green lights that got me thinking in black and white to begin with.

In Aperture I have no trouble getting the image to a point where I am happy. I take advantage of the exposure, levels, and highlight and shadow sliders to make the image pop a little more than the original RAW shot. I also added some sharpness, and played around with the Monochrome Mixer. Because the lights were all green, the only slider that had any effect here was the green channel slider. So I bumped it up a little and it seemed to add a little brightness. I tried playing with the noise reduction sliders but I didn’t see too much of a difference, so I left them unchecked. I then cropped the picture a little and I was done.

In Lightroom I had a very similar experience. However, I did have some fun playing with the Curves tool. Also, I saw a fairly positive effect from the Noise reduction sliders.

Top image processed in Aperture, bottom in Lightroom.

After reviewing both shots I see that for whatever reason, I got a slightly (in my opinion) better result from Lightroom. Maybe it had to do with my working in full screen mode with nearly no surround vs. Lightoom where I had a gray surround and a couple of Panels open. I’m really not sure, but I do like the Lightroom version better. Could I replicate the Lightroom version in Aperture? I would think it would be no problem at all.

After I finished playing with the puppy picture I tried converting a color image of a horse to B/W (see the shot at the top of this post). I wanted to try out some of the color mixing capabilities. My results were good, but inconclusive. Both Lightroom and Aperture, in their own unique ways seemed to do the job. I was able to exaggerate the tones in the sky to mimic a red filter simply by adjusting the Blue channel in the color mixers. It seemed to work in both Aperture and Lightroom equally well.

So, that’s about it for tonight. It’s getting pretty late here in the Caribbean, so please excuse any grammar issues this time! Tomorrow, I am doing this restaurant shoot in the afternoon. It will probably involve some lighting setups for food shots, a few basic interior shots, and maybe some environmental portraits. I am just hoping they let me eat the food I shoot, and drink a couple of beers on the house.

Lightroom 1.0 shipped on Monday. Yeah! Now everyone can finally see first-hand the great features I’ve been writing about. Almost equally exciting to me: on Tuesday we finally settled on a cover image for my O’Reilly Lightroom Adventure book. If you knew what we have gone through…

BIDOA, SOMALIA– It is very interesting to observe the process that Dr. James Orbinski, the former head of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of MSF in 1999, goes through in determining whether we travel to Somalia or not.

He was there in 1992-1993, when the country was going through terrible drought, with war and famine taking thousands of lives. It would be good for the film and for him personally if we get to go, but safety is the primary concern. And we all have to agree.

We have very good contacts in Somalia, and we plan to go to Baidoa, about 250km from the war zone in Mogadishu. In the end, the documentary crew following Dr. Orbinski puts our trust in his thorough and meticulous research, and contacts with people on the ground there. When he determined it would be safe for us to charter a plane and go, we all decided to make the trip.

It is not a cheap trip. Chartering a small plane for the two-hour flight from Nairobi is $13k; return. Once on the ground, we would be taken care of by James’s good friend who lives in Baidoa, and has arranged a team of armed guards and accommodation for us.

Our personal armed guards were always with us.

We are only here for three nights, but from the moment we landed on the airstrip and noticed the Ethiopian tanks and troops awaiting us, I knew this would be different from the other locations.

From the moment we drove away in SUV’s with two armed guards in each truck, I admit, I was nervous. Watching the street scenes as we drove to our hotel, Baidoa looked dirt poor, a vibrant town with remnants of bombed out buildings and people dressed in colorful clothes. This is a Muslim country which in some ways looked more like the Middle East then Sub-Saharan Africa.

Baidoa street scenes.

We had a busy schedule from the moment we arrived. We would meet with The Prime Minister and Speaker from the transitional government. We would go to the hospital, one of the most basic I have ever seen, even by African standards. We would visit a variety of places that James Orbinski had been 15 years earlier; schools, the former MSF grounds, burial sites and meet with old friends he had not seen since his last time here.

I brought my MacBook Pro, and our hotel had a generator that was turned on in the evening so I was able to charge my stuff. But the reality was that by the end of the day, we were all quite exhausted, and my tiny, hot room was not a good place to work, so I didn’t.

It didn’t take long for me to get used to traveling with guys with guns, and the people we met were very friendly, and often didn’t mind having their pictures taken, which did surprise me. I had thought a primarily Muslim population would be a little more guarded about photography, but they were not.

The speaker Shiekh Adan Mohamed Nuur “Madobe” (top), and Somalia’s new prime minister, 52-year-old Ali Mohamed Ghedi with bodyguard in background.

This assignment was a fantastic and inspiring journey on so many levels, but it also had its frustrations. Because the main goal here was to make a documentary, the video camera was always front and center and close to the action, which I had to work around. As well, we were on a very tight schedule, which meant that places I would have loved to spend more time, well–it just wasn’t possible.

But that being said, working closely with the team of Director Patrick Reed, Cinematographer John Westhauser, and sound man extrordinaire Ao Loo, taught me much about grace and professionalism under pressure. Dr. James Orbinski’s story is one of an inspiring role model whose courage in helping people in the most difficult and dangerous situations will no doubt inspire others to get involved.

A man suffering from Malaria, lies in hospital in Bidoa.

On the plane on the way back, Dr. James and I took some of the selects and put together a slide show with music that he would use in a lecture in Toronto the night of his return.

What’s great about Aperture is the ability to move the order of images around in multi-screen view, letting James and I storyboard the images in an order that made sense. We then click on Slideshow, click on the pull down menu to “edit”, and look at the vast possibilities Aperture provides when creating a slideshow.

I like to keep it simple, using dissolve, best quality, crossfade–and then choose the song from iTunes and “fit to music”; ready to go. The one big problem with the slideshow function in Aperture, is you can’t save the show as a Quicktime movie like you can in Keynote and other programs. Here’s hoping future versions will remedy this oversight.

A girls school near Baidoa, Somalia

This was my first road trip with Aperture and I have to give it the highest of marks. From ingest to archiving on the road, even with a portable USB2 drive and not Firewire, it performed flawlessly and enabled me to get my work done as I was shooting, saving a lot of post processing time when I came back. I can’t wait to take it out on my next photo adventure.

Look for a review of my book Heroines & Heroes in American Photo Magazine, March/April Issue, @ newsstands now.

The more I use Lightroom, the more I am beginning to love the program. I think I made that same statement when I first started using Aperture about a year ago. Maybe it has something to do with it being the “new toy” in the room, or maybe I just like the look of the two square icons in my dock (LR and Ps). I really can’t say what it is, but one thing is for sure, Lightroom is growing on me.

Today I had a good time reading all the comments from my previous post. I stuck my foot directly in my mouth when I wrote that you can’t create multiple Versions in LR. When someone kindly pointed out to me that it is possible, I realized that I am getting just as much out of this process as my readers are! You really can’t beat that. One of my favorite things when teaching students about photography is that moment when they start to take over and teach me.

So, for today’s post, I thought I would do a little clean-up and add a few comments having to do with the Library module, and then move on to the Develop module. I added some more images to my Library this afternoon and imported the salvaged pictures from my trip to Les Saintes last weekend. As it turned out, I had a few images that I thought were worth looking at, so I am going to be using these for today’s post.

One of the things that has often bothered me about Aperture has been how it handles Metadata once my images are imported. Aperture has some pretty nice tools and a well planned out Metadata panel ( I love the bottom controls for displaying IPTC, EXIF and other info, and the multiple metadata views) but it has never been very intuitive for me when it comes to batch editing metadata.

Now before you all jump all over me and explain to me how to do a batch change or a lift and stamp, let me just say, I know how to do it. I just don’t think it is very intuitive. In other words, every time I want to do a batch change to, lets say, the IPTC City field, I have to think for a second, and remember what I need to do to make it happen. Then I have to reassure myself that what I am about to do is in fact what I am supposed to do, and then do it. If I am using the lift and stamp tool, I need to make sure I uncheck the things I don’t want lifted and or stamped, and if I am using the Batch Change feature, well, I just don’t like having to go through the steps of bringing that option up every time.

With Lightroom, they have dealt with batch metadata changes in a way that makes perfect sense to me. I select a range of images, find the field in the Metadata area, and change the value. Once I hit return or tab, the change is made to all the images I have selected. My only gripe here is that if I hit tab, I don’t get the next field highlighted and ready to edit. Often times I want to batch change metadata on the fly to a range of images, and I want to just be able to tab through the fields. I don’t want to have to open a special dialog box; I just want it to work. I hope I’m not asking too much here!

As I mentioned in a previous post, having EXIF variables available for entry into IPTC fields would make the whole process sing– that and being able to tab to the next field. Okay, that’s it.

Let’s move on to the Develop module. I think this is going to require a couple of posts for discussion. Lightroom’s Develop module, in a nutshell, is awesome! The ability to add presets and have them readily available in the left side panel is a really great thing. I do miss the Aperture style Loop tool, but somehow I think I could learn to live without it. It’s a nifty feature, but a little over-engineered, in my opinion. The whole Snapshots feature (which I have yet to really discover) is a great idea. I have always wanted something like this. It makes me feel like I’m back in the darkroom, making test prints and being able to go back and see if I went in the wrong direction at some point. It can really be a great learning tool if used correctly.

The History and Copy and Paste functions are right where they should be and are reminiscent of how I used to do things in Photoshop. There is a ton of stuff to look at in the Develop module, but it’s pretty clearly marked and easy to find. In the right-hand panel I have everything I could potentially need. I’m still getting used to all the sliders and what can be done with the histogram and curves box, but I can say so far that they are incredible. I am also really digging the Before and After compare tools. They seem to make perfect sense to me so far, and they really do work.

I find when I begin to work on an image I sort of go down the right panel sliders and see what happens. I’m pretty sure this is a bad way to adjust images as the sliders aren’t meant to be used step by step, but so far it has worked pretty well. Usually I start by dragging the Exposure, Recovery, Fill Light (very cool) and Blacks sliders and then I head down the list. In Aperture, I typically have a routine that I follow as well, and I veer off this routine depending on the image at hand. It took me a while to develop my skills in Aperture, and I am sure it will take me some time to do the same in Lightroom.

I must say here that I was brought up on Curves and Levels in Photoshop. My professors used to tell me that everything the sliders can do can be done with Curves alone. I used to believe them until I wanted to do things like Shadow Recovery and Fill Light effects. These surely can be done with Curves, but it takes some serious know-how and patience. So, I am migrating back to using sliders. I mean, there are even sliders right there in the Curves box in Lightroom! Now I have a plethora of ways to manipulate the image–perhaps too many.

I am especially fond of how Adobe did the HSL, Color and Grayscale sliders. I like things to be all in once place and easily navigable. I think Lightroom has nailed it here.

There has been lots of talk around the web about Lightroom Vs. Aperture in terms of RAW processing. I think it is pretty hard to tell which application does a better job. Many say Lightroom creates a more natural feel and something similar to a film look, while Aperture lovers have been impressed with how Apple’s CoreImage processor handles high ISO pics (well, they weren’t at first). The thing is, it can be really tough to do a side-by-side comparison because the controls are all different, and you are really comparing apples to oranges. I think the answer is basically, “whatever works best for you.” So far with Lightroom I have been pretty satisfied with how my images have been developing. But, I must remind you, I am new to this application, so they aren’t perfect yet!

Above you will see a screenshot put together in Photoshop and reduced to fit the format of this blog. Now, I am not really a side-by-side bench testing kind of guy, so they aren’t very scientific. The idea was to go through the typical workflow I use when adjusting an image. I started by manipulating an image from the original RAW file in Lightroom. To be honest with you, I basically just played with the slider controls until I had something I was pleased with. I did this in fullscreen mode on a gray surround. I also looked at it with the Lights Dimmed mode turned on and made some final tweaks.

The image on the right I worked up in Aperture following a similar workflow. I wasn’t trying to make them match but rather, simply trying to end up with a good result after beginning with the original RAW file. I then did screen shots and compared my work. The Aperture version, which I edited in Full Screen mode, is slightly more washed out, but I did leave some detail in the background. It’s hard to see, but it’s there. Overall, I thought they both looked pretty good, and very close, side-by-side.

Tomorrow, I am planning to dive into more detail about the Develop module. Who knows, I may even talk about ACR vs. Apple’s CoreImage. Yikes! Please do keep the comments coming, and if anyone out there has a technical explanation of the difference between Lightroom’s Recovery slider, and Aperture’s Shadow and Highlight sliders, I’d love to hear about it.

Click here to see today’s gallery.

In January, I posted quite a few entries here about my shoot at Macworld 2007. At the time, however, I didn’t go into specifics about who the client was or what the project was all about. Well, I can now take the wraps off the project. The client was Apple, Inc. and the project was to team up with my friend and podcaster Daniel Steinberg to execute a set of developer profiles for the Apple Developer Connection. Specifically, we created nine profiles of developers who were exhibiting in the ADC Developer Pavilion.

Many Aperture users are finding multiple libraries to be the key to their organizational woes. As Derrick Story described here, Aperture 1.5 provides a simple way to switch between multiple libraries.

However you choose to make the switch from one library to another, it’s worth noting that Aperture stores all of your keywords in the Application Support folder inside your user Library folder. Every time you launch a new library, Aperture scans the keyword database in your Application Support folder and adds any “missing” keywords to the library that you just opened. In other words, all of your keywords will end up in all of your libraries.

On the one hand, this will ensure that you’ll have a consistent keyword structure for all of your libraries. On the other hand, if you’re trying to keep, say, work libraries separate from personal libraries, this feature could get to be a little annoying. There is a work-around, but it rather defeats the purpose of convenient library switching.

If you want to maintain separate keywords for each library, you need to delete two files from the Home > Library > Application Support > Aperture folder: keywordsets.plist, and keywords.plist. These are the “global” keyword databases that contain a running list of all of the keywords you’ve entered in any library. Each Library package also has its own plist that contains only the keywords that are relevant to it. So, when you delete the plists in your Application Support folder, Aperture uses only the keywords contained in the Library package that you’re currently using.

While working these last few days with Lightroom and Aperture side by side I’ve been playing with Stacking as well as Versions (in Aperture), which are called Virtual Copies (in Lightroom). The Virtual Copy tool in Lightroom is a very welcome addition and really helps with my newfound black and white addiction. To create a Virtual Copy in Lightroom go to Photo > Create Virtual Copy in the Library Module. Or you can also right click on any image and choose Create Virtual Copy. Pretty simple. In Aperture it is simple as well and they both perform about the same way. Both applications create copies of the original or master image without taking up but a few kilobytes of hard drive space. And you can create as many versions as you want in both programs. So now we can have the original color image, a sepia tone, and a black and white all right next to each other without chomping into our hard drive space. I don’t see any huge differences between the applications on this front.

In the above image I have selected both the original image and the virtual copy in the survery mode.

Now in terms of Stacking, I was never one who stacked selects on my light table so this function seems a little strange to me but I know of a few Aperture users who swear by it. After playing with stacking in both Lightroom and Aperture, I have to say that it is much better done in Aperture because of the visual separation between stacks and the control you have as to how the stacks are made. Lightroom has similar controls to adjust and automatically form stacks but with the images all lined up right next to each other it isn’t visually easy to delineate where one stack starts and another ends. For my workflow, I don’t use Stacking so I’m not too worried about it. I tend to sequester my images by their star ranking and it works fine for me.

Above is a comparison of Aperture and Lightroom with the images stacked automatically.

In regards to some other observations on these two applications, Aperture only works on my 15″ MacBook Pro at the moment. It will not load onto my G5 tower since the video card on the tower is not up to snuff - though it seems fine for all of my other imaging applications. That in it’s own right is a pain since Lightroom will run on pretty much any computer working with Apple OS 10.4.

Aside from that problem though, I have quickly come to the conclusion that Aperture isn’t really in its element unless you are working on dual monitors. I like the full screen mode in Aperture and actually prefer it to the normal user interface. But I don’t like my image being covered up by the HUD for horizontal images. And I can see that the image editing process would be much nicer in Aperture if I were using dual monitors. I’ll try to put my monitors together this week to see how it works. I am not surprised that in most of the Aperture videos on the Apple website they show Aperture being used with dual monitors. I can imagine it would be really sweet to have Aperture running on dual 23″ or 30″ monitors with one monitor as an image browser and the other as the image preview.

By comparison, Lightroom seems fine on any size monitor - even my 15″ laptop which is great since I will be using it in the field and have quite extensively. I have also worked with Lightroom on a 30″ monitor and it is incredible. On a 30″ monitor forget about clicking off the panels - there is plenty of room to see your image at near 50% or larger with all of the panels open. I was drooling…

That’s it for now. Thank you for all of your comments - keep them coming and I’ll respond when I can.

Adios, Michael Clark

I have never been too satisfied with the Aperture Import panel. Although I think it was well thought out in some regard, it seems to lack in others. First of all, I think they have given way too much space to the thumbnails. Now, while I think it is important to be able to see your thumbnails before you import them (so that you can pick the ones you want) I think they could have used this space a little more efficiently. The problem is the emphasis is on the thumbnails and I have a hard time looking at the important stuff on the right side, especially the metadata area way down at the bottom right.

I do like the way Aperture lets you line up the import with a particular project simply by clicking the desired project, but I wish I could more clearly see all that metadata and import option stuff a little more clearly. I guess this is just a pet peeve of mine.

But, the real problem with the import panel is that I can’t create a metadata preset on the fly. I have to actually select an existing image, and use it as a template. It is true, I can go in and edit the template once it is saved, but this seems to be totally backwards in terms of workflow. It would make more sense for me to create that preset while importing the first card for a project. Lightroom allows for creating a preset on import, PhotoMechanic surely does, why can’t Aperture?

Okay, on to the good stuff about Aperture. One of my favorite Aperture features is the way it handles Versions and Masters. Though I am sure most of you already know this, I will explain for the novices, and Lightroom users. Aperture calls anything that is an actual file on your hard drive a Master. This Master is used to create as many Versions as you would like. Aperture’s Versions are nothing more than database instructions telling Aperture how to render your image. There is usually only one Master, and many Versions–it’s that simple. What is really nice about Aperture is that you can have as many Version as you like. Say for instance you want to crop an image to an extreme panoramic for a website banner. Just create a new version and make your crop. You can go back to this Version at any time and it’s right there where you left it, Stacked up with the Master and all the other Versions you may have already made.

This way of organizing things in Aperture really works for me. I never lose things anymore, and I can always go back to an old Version, or the actual original Master if I like. In addition, if I open the Preferences panel in Aperture, I can set the program to automatically make a new version whenever I start making changes to the Master.

With Lightroom, there is essentially one Version for every Master. Now, it is true, I can always go back to re-edit anything I want. I can change a crop, and I can re-adjust color balance, and I am never actually touching the original file, but I can’t seem to make multiple Versions without making a duplicate Master file.

I am glad to see that Lightroom has Stacks available as a feature. Stacks have always been one of my favorite features in Aperture and I really think they can be a powerful editing tool on a number of different levels. So, it is great to see them present in Lightroom. But in Aperture, the Stacks, combined with the ability to have multiple versions of the same file, is a wonderful thing.

Today’s shooting was pretty much a bust (aside from another rainbow shot). The early morning boat ride to the “Secret Beach” got cancelled at the last minute. I guess the lesson learned there is to never hire a guy to take you in a boat at 8 a.m. the day after Carnival. In the afternoon I walked over to Portsmouth again to look for more Carnival action, but found an empty town. All the shops were closed today and there was little going on except a bunch of Norwegians tourists cruising through the streets on bicycles.

So, I will have to wait until tomorrow to post my next gallery. In the morning I am going to the capital city, Roseau, and in the afternoon, if all goes well, I will be shooting some food setups and the interior of one of the local restaurants. It should be pretty fun, as I have become a regular at the place and the owners are eager to get some photos for their website.

So check back tomorrow when we get deep into the Develop module in Lightroom and how it compares to Aperture’s Adjustments HUD. So far Lightroom looks really impressive on this front.

Also, I just wanted to thank everyone for all the comments. Discussion is what this project is all about, so keep them coming. That last comment about Lightroom’s RAW processing capabilities is really interesting, and sounds like a call for some side-by-side comparisons, so stay tuned!

Do you feel great when your papers are stacked into neat piles, your transparencies tucked into slide pages, and your books arranged on the shelf? If so, you’ll appreciate the variety of photo-organizing features in Lightroom. The Library module offers everything from folder tracking to keywords, collections, Quick Collections, and stacks. The trick to taking advantage of these organizing tools is knowing which to use when. This two-part quick guide will help you choose the best tool for your job.

Folders
The Folders panel in the Library module lists the folders that contain photos you’ve imported into Lightroom. Selecting a folder in this panel displays the contents of that folder and its subfolders in the thumbnail area. Dragging photos between folders in this panel moves the original photos on your drive. If you put a new photo into a listed folder on your drive, it won’t show up in Lightroom unless you also import that photo into Lightroom.

I don’t recommend relying primarily on a folder-based system to organize photos. As your subject matter grows, a folder-based management system becomes unwieldy, causing you to make arbitrary choices about where to store each photo. You’re constantly facing conundrums like whether that photo of Mom and Pop belongs in the Mom folder, the Pop folder, or the parents folder. Rather than struggling with subject matter folders, try filing your photos into umbrella folders labeled by date and client. When you import photos into Lightroom, leave them in those umbrella folders. Then use Lightroom’s keywords, stacks, and collections features to organize and find your photos. Once you let go of the folder mentality, you’ll find Lightroom’s database architecture more flexible and expandable than a folder-based system.

Keywords
Keywords are tags you attach to a photo to identify it by category. Keywords can reflect subject matter (Mom, Pop), location (Jamaica, home), type of photo (color, black and white), flaws to correct (underexposed, flat), or any theme you find meaningful.

The beauty of keywords is that you can apply multiple keywords to a single photo and find that photo by searching on any of its keywords. If you have an underexposed, black and white photo of Mom in Jamaica, you can tag it Jamaica, Mom, black and white, and underexposed. You’ll be able to find it by searching on any of those keywords. That beats puzzling over whether to put the photo in a Jamaica folder, a Mom folder, a black and white folder, or a corrections folder.

In Part Deux of this guide, I’ll take a look at other organizational features in the Library module: collections, Quick Collections, and stacks.

One of the more valuable bits of metadata that comes along with digital images is the date and time at which they were taken. When I’m traveling, however, I never remember to change the time on my camera when I change time zones. That’s ok. Aperture makes it easy to do a bit of time shifting on import. Simply set the time adjustment section of the import panel appropriately.

A powerful addition to Lightroom is the ability to change saturation, lightness, and hue for different colors. Until now, this feature wasn’t in Camera Raw, and the need to go into Photoshop to alter each color channel made the workflow and management of pictures a lot harder — you’d have to manage a different version of the picture, not to mention the additional steps involved in taking the picture into Photoshop for an otherwise simple adjustment.

One of many uses of this powerful Lightroom tool is to make blue skies bluer, similar to the effect of a polarizing filter. To do this, simply slide down the blue lightness slider in the HSL panel to make the sky more striking. This technique can sometimes transform a rather dull landscape into a very good one. Here is a example of this method:

More extreme usage of this function is to change colors with the hue slider, although that’s something I rarely do with blue skies.

For me, it’s all about the print. I have been saying that for 30 years. At the end of the day, when you make a print, you start a conversation. The print tells the story. And without a print, it’s hard to share the story.

In addition to being one of the oldest methods of creating an archive of a photo negative, prints offer you a way to spread your photographic love to all you encounter. But some photographers have abandoned the print in favor of the web. It’s too much trouble or hassle for some folks. Another argument is that prints are too expensive to hand out. Not really.

I just got through running a complete test of the Epson PictureMate PM240, using Aperture as the only software connecting to the printer.

Folk-rock artist Jimmy Camp was recently evaluating options for recording his demo album. In frustration at not being able to find an affordable commercial recording studio that met his budget, he wound up recording using only his iPod. He purchased a Belkin Tune Talk ($70) mic accessory for his video iPod, connected it to a basic mixer, and was able to record his album, “Captain America,” with no editing or special effects. Voila! Check out the results at Jimmy’s site — you be the judge.

Sophie, a project to create multimedia books, is now available in Alpha release. Based on Squeak, Sophie is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Sophie is not a tool to render traditional paper books to read on your PC. The Sophie project is aimed to go beyond print and utilize the interactive capabilities of the personal computer. From the Sophie Project site:

Sophie is a digital media assembly tool which allows you to combine images, text, video, and audio into a single multimedia document. It is an easy-to-use program that let’s you put together documents, slideshows, presentations, annotated videos, and more.

Sophie is based on the idea of authoring digital multimedia documents that you can publish for others to experience. It uses standard interface ideas that will be familiar to users of multimedia authoring tools such as Sony Vegas, Adobe Flash or Adobe Premiere: a time-line for time-based media, drag and drop of resources on a paged book and a traditional menu bar.

Usable right out of the box, Sophie comes from a highly experienced and dedicated team, but don’t expect this version to be free of bugs. The release will give you a good idea of the product and of what’s to come. The Mac and Windows version is a bit farther along than the Linux version, but the team is quickly fixing bugs on the Linux version, too.

I think the team’s real challenge is not technical but business: how does one promote a new multimedia format that will compete against predominant formats such as PDF (Adobe has just released PDF format), Adobe Flash and other eBook formats?

Why don’t you try it out and let’s share some Sophie books. It looks like fun!

Links:
Download Sophie
Sophie tutorials
Institute for the Future of the Book

Today at around 11 a.m. I headed off to photograph the local Carnival celebration in Portsmouth, Dominica. Portsmouth is the second largest city in Dominica, though it is not really a city, but more of a fishing village. I had thought about going down to Roseau, the capital of Dominica, and where the larger Carnival festivities would be taking place, but I changed my mind and thought it might be more interesting to shoot something local. After living in the area for over six months, I figured it would be kind of cool to focus on the same locals I see every day.

After a short mile and a half walk, I was in Portsmouth. The weather was just holding out, with a few light rain drops here and there, and mostly overcast skies. For something like this I like to pack light, and so I brought only my Canon 20D, an EF-S 10-22mm 3.5-4.5 lens, and my 70-200mm IS 2.8. I have a small Domke bag, which I like to use for street work, as it can hold the 70-200, and a flash if I need it. I can also stuff my wallet, extra batteries and memory cards in there with out a problem. I find this simple kit (sans flash for today) works out great for street work, as it is lightweight and indiscrete.

Once I made my way down to town, I just followed the music. The town looked like there had been a huge party there the night before. Carnival goes from Sunday until Tuesday and the biggest parties are at night. I quickly found the party, which consisted of a large tractor trailer pulling a flatbed with a band on top, and a crowd of locals dancing all around. It was quite a sight. The Portsmouth locals had dispensed with the standard Carnival costumes and were basically just following the truck through the streets, dancing in its wake.

I spent a while photographing the dancing and eventually the truck operators decided it was time to call it quits. They promised to come back later in the afternoon and the crowd dispersed. After a while I walked back home and took some shots of a few fisherman on the beach.

Once I was home it was time to start playing with my new toy, Lightroom. I started up the trial version and inserted a memory card. Just as quickly as my machine recognized the card an import window appeared asking me how I would like to handle the import of images into Lightroom.

I had spent some time with the beta version and was pretty familiar with using the import panel, but it has changed since I last played with it. The options are fairly obvious, and seem pretty intuitive. I had to make a few decisions with regard to how Lightroom would rename files, and organize the images into folders, and that was about it. I also had the option to set up a Metadata preset. This is a really nice feature and I decided to go ahead and create one that I could continue to use throughout this project. I still prefer the IPTC power of PhotoMechanic by Camerabits as the ultimate batch metadata handler, and I really wish both Apple and Adobe would take a few hints in this regard. For instance, why do I need to enter the date the pictures were taken in the IPTC area? With PhotoMechanic I can simply tell it to copy over the camera’s EXIF date and I’m done. This seems like a pretty obvious and necessary feature to me.

I directed Lightroom to store all of my images sorted into folders by date, and I placed them in the Lightroom folder in my Pictures folder. Later in the week I plan to experiment with moving these images from place to place using the finder. But for now, they are sitting in one spot.

Lightroom organizes things a bit differently than Aperture. One of the major differences is that Lightroom doesn’t use Projects to hold images. Instead the images are first referenced by where they exist on the hard drive. In the Library module in Lightroom you can quickly look at your shoot by using the folder panel to find your images. You can also create as many Collections as you would like, which are sort of akin to Albums in Aperture. With these collections you can ultimately organize your library in any way that you would like.

I haven’t really decided the approach I like best. When I first began using Aperture, I was a little thrown off by the Project concept, but now I really like being able to export an entire project, metadata, masters and versions, and everything as one single package file. This is a nice feature that is totally absent in Lightroom, or at least I haven’t found something similar as of yet.

One nice feature in the Library module of Lightroom that jumped out at me is the Metadata browser. I can quickly search through my entire archive for images taken with a particular lens, a certain camera (by serial number even) or a myriad of other metadata. This is pretty nice, but I am not sure what type of usage it will see in the field. So far it is just sort of fun. I do like having the browse by date feature available. Aperture really makes that a hard thing to do, by having to create a query every-time you want to find images from a particular date. One thing that would be nice in Lightroom would be the ability to customize the Metadata Browser so that I could browse by whatever I wanted and not just the prepackaged fields.

This brings me to my next point. The search function in Lightroom seems a little lacking. Aperture’s query HUD has all the bells and whistles I can think of and works very much like a search would be performed in the Finder. Why can’t I add additional search criteria in Lightroom? It’s true, I can perform a text based search and then add filters to that result, but that’s about it. It’s not too impressive when compared to Aperture’s query HUD and the ability to create Smart Albums.

Another basic element that I have found missing from the Library module is some type of parallel to Aperture’s Vault system. Scratch that, I found it. Lightroom does have a built in backup system, where you can have it automatically save a second copy of your images to a separate location on import, and you can have the program automatically back up its database periodically. But it isn’t quite as intuitive as Aperture’s Vault system. It took me a while to realize it was even an option, and it really only allows for a single backup, though I am sure there are ways of getting around that limitation. I should say here that I have never been a huge fan of Aperture’s Vault system, but at least it is easy to set up and seems to work. If it had some sort of scheduler I think it would make a pretty decent system. Lightroom on the other hand, has the scheduler, but trying to figure out how to get it all set up is a bit complicated, and in the end I just decided not to worry about it and rely on my own backup software to achieve the same result.

Well, after a few hours of playing with Lightroom I can say this: I really like it. The interface is pretty nice, and it seems to be zipping along at a pretty decent pace on my MacBook Pro. So far it has been pretty intuitive. I still don’t know how to lift and stamp metadata, and I miss hitting F for full screen mode and a laundry list of other Aperture features I have gotten used to, but overall it has been a pleasure to work with on the first day.

I even managed to create a simple web gallery of images from today’s shoot. The Web module looks like a real shining star for Lightroom and I can’t wait to investigate it further. To check out today’s gallery go to http://www.micahwalter.com/oreilly/day1/.

Tomorrow I am headed out on a boat ride to a “Secret Beach” here in Dominica. We will be leaving at 8 a.m. and will be back before noon. I will then take a lunch break and head back to Carnival for more festivities and hopefully some better light.

Location, location, location: In this brief online video, podcaster David Adam Weiss demonstrates how to improve your voiceovers dramatically just by tweaking your mic position.

Weiss makes his point with a $65 Giant Squid mic taped to a ballpoint pen, but says it works equally well with the $15 mic he uses for Boston Behind the Scenes.

After watching the Weiss demo, I looked more closely at the technique Australian broadcaster Ken Sparks used with the Rode Podcaster mic. Notice how he too avoids P-pops by talking past the mic rather than right into it:

Sometimes it’s the little things that make the biggest difference.

Well, it is early Monday morning here in the West Indies. I’m sitting here in my apartment sipping my morning coffee and waiting for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 to download. That’s right! Adobe has released version 1.0 of Photoshop Lightroom today and you can download a free thirty day trial version right now from their website.

Wait one second… okay, it’s finished! Wow that was quick. The download file is only 20 megabytes. I’ll be right back. Got to go install it.

Done. That took all of ten seconds. Very cool. Just as a technical aside, I see that the trial version has replaced my beta version. Also, in case any of you were wondering, I am starting this field test off with empty libraries for both Aperture and Lightroom. To do this, I simply moved my local Aperture library into a subfolder, and created a new one by opening Aperture. I also moved my Lightroom library to a subfolder, and this caused Lightroom to ask me if I wanted to create a new library or locate the old one. I selected the first option and made a mental note about how Lightroom might be handling multiple libraries for a future post.

In a few hours I am heading into town to begin shooting the local “Carnival” celebration that is taking place here today. Carnival is considered a national holiday here in Dominica, and just about everything is closed. There is a parade scheduled until “the music stops.” So it should be interesting.

As I sit here preparing to head out, I can’t help myself from thinking about a small disaster I had over the weekend. On Saturday my girlfriend and I took a day trip by boat to a neighboring French island called Les Saintes. The island is actually a part of a large group of islands that sit next to Guadaloupe, another, larger island in the French Antilles.

On the boat ride over, I filled an entire 2 gig card with RAW images–about 200 or so on my Canon 20D. The shooting was fun and I thought I had started things off by making some cool shots of the boats going by and the people enjoying the ride on the seventy foot catamaran. I also got some neat shots of the islands as we approached, and was pretty charged up as a photographer can sometimes get.

When we landed I started shooting pictures of the town and noticed that I had filled my card. Well, at least that is what I thought had happened. Then my camera began acting a little funny. The red light that normally blinks while the camera is writing a file was solid. The camera wouldn’t fire, and I couldn’t get it to do, well, anything at all.

I resorted to removing the batteries and the card, waiting a few minutes and trying again. I inserted a new card and the batteries and it started right up. I was back in business. I continued taking pictures throughout the day, but spent most of my time driving our scooter and enjoying the French food and deserted beaches.

Later that evening when we got back I tried to import my images in to Aperture. That’s when I realized what had happened. The first card was fried. After several attempts to recover the card, via Lexar’s Image Rescue software and a few other applications I downloaded, I eventually had to give up. Not only were my images gone, but the card itself was unsalvageable. I was officially pissed off.

It took me a few hours to cool down and realize that these types of disasters can happen to anyone. Equipment will fail– it is only a matter of time. In my experiences as a photographer, there have been plenty of equipment failures. From lenses getting jammed, to hard drives crashing, film getting left in the developer tank at the lab, or the accidental dropping of a cell phone in the toilet, these things just happen.

Fortunately for me, I am planning to go on the same boat trip next month, so I will have a chance to retake some of the pictures, but these types of events always cause me to rethink how I do things. What could I have done better to prevent this from happening.

All I have come up with so far is, buying some new cards and moving on. There really isn’t much I could have done differently. If I had a Canon 1D-Mark II, I could send RAW files to the CF card and Jpegs as a backup to the SD slot. But, I don’t have that camera, so it isn’t an option. I need to work with what I have, and figure it all out. Was it the camera that caused the failure? Was it the card? Maybe it was all that Caribbean sea-spray splashing on my equipment. Who knows. As they say, I have to just “keep on keepin on.”

Well, it’s time to get up and get to work. I have lots to shoot today, and I will be posting my results later this evening. Since I have this new fancy trial version of Lightroom, I will start things off working with the Adobe’s “Aperture-Killer” for day one of the Aperture Vs. Lightroom Odyssey, right here on the O’Reilly Digital Network.

So, add the blog to your RSS reader, or check back each evening for updates, and if you have yet to visit the Inside Lightroom site, be sure to check out Michael Clark’s comparison, which will be coming to you alongside mine over the next week or so.

If another card goes down today, I have a few in reserve, and if they all fail, I will get Derrick to fedEx me some new ones! Keep on keepin on…

With all of the recent buzz about Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and its release today, the big question is how it compares to Apple Aperture. In tandem with Micah Walter on the Inside Aperture website I will be conducting a comparison of the two programs and how they stack up for my workflow. I’ll just say upfront that my purpose is not to bash either of these pieces of software. They are both incredibly powerful and a cut above the rest of the RAW processing and image editing software programs on the market today.

For the next ten days, I will work with both Lightroom and Aperture to work up images from a recent stock shoot and draw conclusions as I compare how each program deals with a variety of workflow topics. I don’t intend this to be a definitive comparison - just my thoughts on what works for me. I will post a few extra blogs this week as I work with both programs and present a wrap up article with my conclusions which will be published on the Inside Lightroom website on February 28th.

Just to give you a little background, for the last year I have been using Lightroom quite a bit and it is currently the heart of my workflow. I have worked with Aperture a little but I must admit I don’t know it nearly as well as I do Lightroom. My initial impression of Aperture is that it seems overly complex when compared to Lightroom. The user interface for Lightroom is very intuitive and easy to use, especially coming from a Photoshop and Adobe Camera RAW workflow. By comparison, Aperture seems a little clunky because a lot of the interface seems to be buried in drop down menus but mostly because I just haven’t spent as much time learning how to use the software. I’ll admit I am biased towards Lightroom, but I’ll try to overcome that and make a solid comparison with Aperture.

One thing to keep in mind as I compare these two programs is the type of images I shoot and the number of images I have to edit and process. I tend to shoot a large number of images (anywhere from 300 to 2,000 per day or per photo shoot) and I end up processing about 20 to 25% of those images. Since I photograph adventure sports, I usually have a lot of sequences shot at 5 or even 8 frames per second. For photographers that don’t produce such a high volume of images then my analysis and workflow may be a bit skewed for your workflow.

As I go through and process my latest stock shoot of 800+ images I will be looking at quite a few different aspects of each program including the following:

Importing Images and adding Metadata
File/Folder Structure
Image Editing: Ranking and Rating Images, Stacking and Versions
Developing Images
Grayscale conversion
Exporting Images
Color Management
Spotting Images
Sharpening
Creating Web Galleries
Slideshows
Printing
User Interface
Final processed image quality comparison
SPEED!

This should be a fun week and I am looking forward to getting started on the comparison. I hope you’ll check in regularly, and I look forward to reading your comments.

Adios, Michael Clark

I recently discovered another great use for the Auto-Stack feature in Aperture.

I was shooting a large regional swim meet and wanted to make sure I didn’t miss any critical shots, but I could not get a second a shooter go with me to the event. So I rigged up my second camera on a tripod looking down the staring blocks and fitted it with a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L set to 24mm to allow me to get a nice wide shot of the starting blocks area and the athletes diving into the water.

The camera I was carrying was fitted with a Canon 100-400mm IS L lens (my favorite sports lens).

Then I fitted each camera with a PocketWizard Plus II and the “remote camera” (the one on the tripod) was fitted with a trigger cable from the PocketWizard to the camera.

What this arrangement allowed me to do was to get closeup shots with my hand-held camera and wider angle shots at the same time, thanks to the PocketWizard wireless remotes.

I’ve been testing the HP Pro B9180 inkjet printer for the last few months, and for much of my printing, using Aperture. Why? In short, because it’s easier.

I was running a variety of paper stocks through the B9180 (and if you read the review, you’ll see there are some great ones), and being able to save all of my presets was a blessing. One of the keys to testing, and printing repeatability in general, is to find the best settings, then stick with them. Aperture makes this so easy.

Speaking of the HP B9180 itself, I think this is a great pro printer for $500. I’m totally addicted to 13×19 inch prints - don’t like looking at anything smaller really. And they are beautiful, archival, and feel good in the hands. This is the unit I’m now recommending to photo enthusiasts looking for their first serious printer. And the good news for us is, it works great with Aperture.

One other thing, if you haven’t listened to my interview with Joe Schorr on color management, I recommend it. Lots of tips in there apply nicely to working with the HP B9180.

The next Maker Faire will be on May 19 and 20, 2007 at the San Mateo Fairgrounds in Northern California, USA. Organized by the staff of Make and Craft magazines, Maker Faire is a newfangled fair that brings together science, art, craft and engineering in a fun, energized, and exciting public forum. The aim is to inspire people of all ages to roll up their sleeves and become makers. Among the many areas of interested featured at the event, digital photography is one that we’re all keenly interested in.

If you have a cool DIY photography-related project that you’d like to show off at Maker Faire, please submit a proposal via the Call for Makers. Topics such as homemade photo studios, creative printing techniques, unusual display, and fun selling ideas are just a few of the categories that would be perfect for Maker Faire.

The deadline for proposals is Feb. 27, so don’t dally if you have a great idea. And even if you decide you don’t want to display at the Faire, you still gotta come by for a look at what everyone else is doing. It’s a great adventure for all members of the family.

Welcome to this week’s edition of Friday Napster Freebies. These un-DRMed MP3 files are free for a limited time and can be downloaded from just about any country. Enjoy! Be aware, however, that the Napster site is pretty slow and unresponsive today, so if you’re having any problems with downloads, you might want to try again later.

“The House Under the Hill” by The Finches
This San Francisco-based duo writes and performs songs about fantasy architecture, filial love, and travel anxiety, all with a tip of the hat to Leonard Cohen and Francois Hardy. This song is from their debut full-length album, Human Like a House.

“My God, It’s Full of Stars” by Aerial
These Swedish rockers rock. In one year, Aerial toured Europe and made their sophomore album The Sentinel–a collection of focused tracks packed with the great guitar work for which the band is known.

“Be My Valentine” by Dr. Elmo
Nothing says “romance” on Valentine’s Day like Dr. Elmo. This veterinarian’s comedy carol, “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” has sold over 10 million copies. Today’s download is another tongue-in-cheek ditty dedicated to the day of love.

“A Friend of Mine” by Piebald
Already veterans of Boston’s indie scene, these high-school comrades have seven albums to their credit and have headlined shows with My Chemical Romance. Today’s download is from their latest album, Accidental Gentlemen.

“Steady as She Goes” by James Yorkston
Hailing from a small village in Scotland, this former punk rocker turned acoustic singer-songwriter first gained recognition with Radio One god John Peel. His latest album, The Year of the Leopard, has finally been released in the U.S.

“The Great Compromise” by Kingsbury
After releasing two EPs, Orlando, FL’s very own complete their full-length debut despite losing two of the original members. While most groups would have lost their focus, Kingsbury has never been better. Today’s download comes from The Great Compromise.

“Lest I Fall” by Man of Sorrows
Pushing the boundaries of hardcore metal, these lads from San Antonio, TX mix in Latin percussion with their crunchy guitars and low-end driving drums. Your typical metal? Probably not. Consider this the new sound of Christian metal.

In the late 1960s when I was wandering around the New York City area with a Nikon F over my shoulder, a slice of 42nd street pizza in one hand and a Miller Highlight in the other, I was most heavily influenced by the words of John Lennon (”what if they gave a war and nobody came”), Frank Zappa (”don’t eat that yellow snow”) and Tom Rapp. Now I know that most of you (even the ones who are as old as I am) are thinking, “who is Tom Rapp?”

Tom Rapp was the creator, writer, musician (almost all instruments), and singer of the Pearls Before Swine. OK some of you are starting to nod your heads now, and some maybe even remember their first album (1967) “One Nation Underground” and the cover art from that album, Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden Of Delights”. (”Drop Out” was the song that actually influenced me the most from that album).

Well anyway, on the Pearls Before Swine third album “These Things Too” (1969) there was a song entitled “These Things Too”.

“These Things Too”
By Tom Rapp

There was a Persian king
Who wanted to know
What he could say on
Every occasion
That always would be so

Illusions, circles and changes
Illusions, always changing
Like the wind and the rain

He summoned three wise men
From his eternal throne
One from each border
Gave them his order
To write words always true

The wise men thought so hard
For a night and day
Found these words to say on
Every occasion
These things too shall pass away

© 1969 by Thomas D. Rapp

Now that I have your full attention, you must be wondering what this blog is all about. Well I was reading the other Inside Lightroom Bloggers posts a few days ago and something struck me about Michael Clark’s post. It turns out that I am not the only one who is not using all of Lightroom’s features in my workflow and I don’t have to make excuses about it.

Software applications are tools for us to use, it is not necessary for us to be shaped by our tools. After all does anyone use all of Adobe Photoshop’s tools? Not even remotely, but that does not negate the power and the usefulness of the application.

Michael stated that he does not use Lightroom to catalog his entire image library, that he is quite happy with his own cataloging system and uses Lightroom to organize and work with current photography projects and flushes them out of Lightroom every month or so to keep the Lightroom image cache small and starts over with the next project.

Interestingly enough I do exactly the same thing. I had been thinking about changing over to using Lightroom to manage my entire image library, but I have to thank Michael for stopping me in my tracks and making me rethink my next move.

What I will probably do is dedicate one computer to managing the entire library using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, mainly so I can write about the experience, but keep my current image library where it is now.

I will continue to use my main working computer for current photography projects only, using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for organizing, developing and distributing my project images.

What this process will of course insure, is that my images will be safe and my personal cataloging system intact, just in case these things too shall pass away.

Next week is going to be an exciting one for Adobe. The long awaited release of their much talked about Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 will take place on Monday following a public beta testing period that has spanned an entire year.

For many, Lightroom has already become a favorite app. Not only is it a lightweight program with a snappy interface, Lightroom runs on both the Mac and the PC. For others, it has probably made more sense to wait for an end to the beta period. So we can be sure many folks will be eager to download the free trial and see how the first version stacks up.

There have been many articles written on the differences between Lightroom and Aperture over the past year. So many that at first I thought I would be beating a dead horse to bring up the “Aperture vs. Lightroom” equation once again. But, I really have been pretty excited about Lightroom, and I feel I needed to do something.

So, for the entire week, beginning Monday, I am going to take you on a journey into the heart of both applications. All week I will be shooting a travel documentary of the tiny island of Dominica. Each day I will alternate between applications. One day I will use Aperture, the next I will use Lightroom and back and forth until the end of the week. I plan to use this as an opportunity to pick apart the two programs and really put them to the test, side by side, in the field.

I also plan to publish a web gallery of my selects each day so you can follow along with the results, and yes, I will be talking about the photography in general and not just the software.

The shooting for this event will begin this weekend with a boat trip to the nearby French Island, Les Saintes, and then we will really begin to get into things on Monday when I go down to the capital to cover “Carnival.” If all goes well, I should have my first web gallery and blog entry up by Monday night or Tuesday morning. During the rest of the week I have a number of shoots lined up so keep checking back to see how things are going.

Recording voiceovers for podcasts can be tricky, because it’s so easy to pick up background noise, slapback echo from your desktop, and room reverberation. Here’s an ingenious solution hacked up by a professional voiceover artist.

Harlan Hogan’s voiceover porta-booth uses a collapsable storage crate lined with acoustic foam to isolate the microphone from its surroundings:

The porta-booth set up in a hotel room. Note the Sennheiser 416 mic with shockmount and pop filter, Edirol UA-25 USB audio interface, and Sony laptop running Adobe Audition.

Folded for travel.

What a brilliant realization: You don’t have to build a vocal booth big enough for both the mic and the performer, just the mic. At the end of the article, which I found clear and entertaining, Hogan describes another kind of vocal booth that you may not realize you already have.

(Via DVguru)

Lightroom is such a rich program with such an apparently simple interface that, at first, you may not appreciate how powerful it really is. Wonderful as it is to be able to process one’s images non-destructively, the further you can push it to do as much of your work, the more good it does to have the work done non-destructively (meaning that all of the information recorded in RAW format remains completely intact).

Some things you supposedly couldn’t do non-destructively, Lightroom now can do non-destructively. For instance, in the latest beta versions, you’re able to straighten, crop, and re-scale to full-size. You can also spot and heal (though you can only do that inside a circular shape, so you’re pretty much limited to fixing sensor dust and zits). Also, you can also do initial sharpening (fixing the slight “smearing” that interpolating the sensor’s Bayer pattern causes) and some repairing of color and luminance noise.

GOMA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (DRC)– A documentary film crew and I have made our way here by car from Kigali, Rwanda. We are following Dr. James Orbinski, the former head of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), (who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of MSF in 1999) to this frontier-town, where the flurry of activity near the customs booth makes it difficult to know who is official and who isn’t; since most of the agents are not in any uniform. We spend some time clearing customs without trouble, though on the way out we needed to pay a “fee” to leave with our stuff: One US Dollar.

A street scene in Goma, DRC.

Goma is the city bordering on Rwanda with the active Nyiragongo Volcano, last erupting in January 2002, when dozens were killed and 100,000 of the estimated half-million inhabitants lost their homes. Everywhere you step, you are walking on the dark, dried lava. This city is built on volcanic lava, without water supply or soil, making it very difficult for people to support themselves. Seventy per cent of families in the area have an average monthly income of less than $25.

Remnants from the last volcanic eruption in 2002 are never far from view.

Goma is also one of the locations Hutu Rwandans fled to during the genocide of 1994 and the DRC is the country where an estimated 3.9 million people have died from starvation, disease and violence due to conflict since 1998.

We are cautioned to be careful here, and my general sense is that many people are not overly keen on being photographed, after asking a number of times.

We stop at HEAL Africa, a non-profit group that deals with the effects of extreme violence, including widespread rape which has been systematically used as a weapon of war. More than 60,000 rapes have been reported in just two provinces of Congo since 2003, and we visit some of the victims that were lucky to make it to the safe confides of this place of healing.

We stay in very modest but safe accommodations. I have electricity, and I start downloading the day’s take. As you may remember from my last post where I describe my workflow, I’m using a managed-Aperture library located on my USB-2, 120 GB, bus-powered drive and it’s working well. It will be interesting for me to see just how much faster Aperture runs with a bus-powered Firewire drive. But for now, I have no complaints.

After editing, I click on my three-star select Smart Album, choose the images for this blog and export versions by creating a new pre-set, fitting within 480 pixel width, 480 pixel height, 72dpi– JPEG image quality set to 6.

Here’s a little trick I’ve been using in Photoshop to sharpen my small, “for the web” images. Under Filter>Artistic>Paint Daubs, I use the defaults, Brush Size 1, Sharpness 1, Brush Type Simple. Voila, the small 72dpi image now “pops”. I’ve been doing this for years for images posting to the web, but when I come back, I plan on playing with Aperture’s Edge Sharpen adjustment to come up with my new Aperture standard. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

A young Congolese photographer gives the author a taste of his own medicine.

Next post: Destination Somalia!

With Lightroom looming on the horizon, we’re going to see more and more comparison articles pitting Aperture head-to-head with Adobe’s offering. Lightroom certainly has some very nice features, but it currently lacks one enabling technology that gives Aperture an advantage for some users. Thanks to Aperture’s AppleScript support, Apple has been able to quickly add two important features for high-end shooters.

The first of these was tethered shooting, which Apple managed to have ready by the time that Aperture 1.0 shipped. Then, late last year, they added the ability to import images from up to 8 card readers simultaneously. You won’t find this feature built-in to Aperture, but you can add it through the Aperture Card Importer a free download available from Apple’s web site.

Why would you want to import from multiple card readers? If you’re a heavy shooter working on a deadline, the ability to import from multiple readers means you can plug up to eight cards into your Mac, and then leave your computer unattended while all of the cards are emptied into Aperture. So, for example, if you’ve had a long day of shooting and have gotten in late with a lot of full cards, but need to deliver images by noon the next day, you can hook up a bunch of card readers, start Aperture downloading them, and go to bed while your images transfer. What would normally require a lot of babysitting can be accomplished while you snore away in the other room. When you come back in the morning, refreshed from a good night’s sleep, your images will be securely stored in an Apeture project, ready for editing.

For this to work, you’ll need to have multiple card readers. In my experience, the best way to go is with the Lexar Professional Compact Flash Reader. Available with USB 2 or Firewire interfaces, these devices are speedy, sturdy, and have multiple ports, meaning you can easily daisy-chain them together.

The Aperture Card Importer is a great addition for busy shooters, and one that Lightroom currently lacks. Even if you don’t need it, it’s a great example of the extensibility that Aperture has thanks to its AppleScript support, something that should only improve as the application matures.

In the old days, when I needed a break from working on a book, I’d make a social phone call, or tidy up my desk, or go for a walk. Now I poke around the internet and spend way too much time looking at book ratings on amazon.com. I just noticed, for example that amazon lists no less than seven books on Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, including the one I’m madly trying to finish. Seven books! And the product, as of this date, still hasn’t shipped. (Apple Aperture, Lightroom’s direct competitor, has only a couple books about it, and it’s been shipping for over a year!)

In this week’s Digital Media Insider podcast, “Express Yourself,” I played a bunch of examples recorded with wind controllers, electronic devices that transform the player’s breath into expressive musical gestures. Matt Traum, who contributed the amazing Crumar sawtooth solo, just wrote to remind me about the extensive wind controller FAQ on his site.

Matt Traum on the Steiner EVI.

As a former French horn player who now lives in the push-button world of computers and MIDI keyboards, I’ve been planning to get into wind control myself. Time to haul that BC3 out of the closet and start breathing more life into my music!

The MIDI Solutions Breath Controller interface connects to the Yamaha BC3A breath controller headset (shown smaller than relative size here) to translate your breath pressure into MIDI data.

During a recent chat with Joe Schorr about color management, he reminded me of a tip that I use a lot, but haven’t discussed much: onscreen proofing. This is very handy when reviewing a batch of images that you know you’re going to run through the printer. I use the Epson R2400 and the HP 9180. As you can image, they both have very different inks and paper stocks. So choosing the printer profile and paper stock that I’m going to use while working in Aperture really cuts down on the number of test prints I have to run.

You can set up onscreen proofing under the View menu in Aperture.

You have to have your printer ICC profiles loaded in order for them to show up in the View menu. But you need those anyway :) I’ll sometimes create a new version to make adjustments for a specific profile, such as a paper that’s warmer than the normal stocks I use. Overall, I find this tool handy. So, if you’re not using it already, give on-screen proofing a try, and see if you saves you a sheet of paper here and there.

Vibrance is a new addition to the Lightroom Beta and is inspired from a similar control with the same name in Pixmantec Rawshooter which Adobe bought last year. I used RawShooter before I decided to switch to Photoshop CS2 Camera Raw / IView after Lightroom beta became available for Windows last summer. I have experimented with different Saturation/Vibrance combination - lowering saturation down quite a bit and raising the vibrance level to compensate and that gives sometimes good and sometimes interesting results.

The short definition for these controls from Adobe is:

Vibrance: Adjusts the saturation so that clipping is minimized as colors approach full saturation. Vibrance also prevents skintones from becoming over saturated.

Saturation: Adjusts the saturation of all image colors equally from -100 (monochrome) to +100 (double the saturation).

I sometimes use the method I described before to get an almost old style look for images like in this example:

Here the effect is used to turn down the saturation and pushing up the Vibrance to give the colors a boost. I recommend playing with these two sliders to get a feel for how they work together.

One of my favorite ways of using Aperture is in Full Screen mode. In this mode, you get as much real estate as possible focused on the most important thing: Your photographs. When I first started using Aperture, however, there was something about full screen mode that frustrated me. I tried putting the image navigation bar on the bottom and on the sides, but it was always and just ever so slightly getting in the way. The problem is that it was covering up a bit of my images, taking the magic out of full screen mode.

After fighting with it for a while, I finally found the magic “Avoid” setting in the Viewer Mode control. This menu item can also be easily accessed with the Control-V keyboard shortcut. The location of this setting is shown in the following screen grab:

Digital “workflow” has been a buzz-word for a number of years now ever since digital took the photography world by storm. Photographers from all over the globe talk about it seemingly non-stop. They chat on forums, take digital workflow workshops and agonize about minute aspects of image quality. I started experimenting with digital about three years ago. Back then, it was 6 MP and while the image quality was good the motor drive speeds weren’t fast enough for my adventure sports photography. Aside from the speed issue the outdoor industry was slow to accept digital images which curbed my enthusiasm for digital. Both the speed and image quality issues were quelled when Nikon introduced the D2x. With image quality rivaling medium format film the latest DSLR’s were hard to ignore and I jumped in with both feet. I have only shot one roll of 35mm film in the last two years since and though I still shoot medium format film to create a certain look or when a client asks for it, I don’t shoot nearly as much film as I used to.

The new reality is the job of processing our own images for output whether to our own ink jet printer or for print in magazines, brochures or the web has fallen on us, the photographer. For most of us, we’ve figured out a sensible workflow to process our images and changing that method isn’t at the top of too many photographers “to do” lists. Even so, all of us can benefit from less time in front of the computer and more time behind the camera. On that note I would like to suggest a few ways in which Adobe’s Lightroom can make your workflow a little more efficient.

First and foremost is the editing process. Once images are imported into Lightroom and the previews have been rendered, editing your images becomes a simple process. As I said in my previous blog post rendering the 1:1 Previews is a critical step. The ability to compare images side by side and even zoom to 100% on both images simultaneously is another sweet feature that streamlines the editing process. Add to that the stacking and versions features, the ability to sort and filter your images six ways to Sunday and the editing process that used to be a major hassle is now relatively painless. Once your images are edited moving into the Develop module presents a seamless workflow. Using Lightroom isn’t rocket science and that is part of it’s beauty.

One of my favorite Lightroom features is creating black and white images. Once in the develop module choose the before/after mode, then choose grayscale. You will now be able to see your original color image and the black and white counterpart just next to it. Lightroom allows you to enhance your grayscale image’s brightness, contrast, color balance and everything else just as with color images but you can also work on the image with the grayscale sliders affecting each color channel individually. All the while you can see how your grayscale image compares to the original color image and tweak the sliders accordingly. I’ve never seen a black and white conversion method this intuitive. This is worth a serious look for anyone who wants to create fabulous black and white images with their digital camera.

Beyond the editing and image processing features, Lightroom offers very powerful slideshow, printing and web gallery options - all of which can work with your RAW images directly. It is easy to see that Adobe’s programmers have gone to great lengths to simplify the digital workflow process with Lightroom.

How Lightroom fits into your current workflow depends on many factors. For myself, I’m not currently using Lightroom as a Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool but just as an image processor. I import images from photo shoots into Lightroom in groups so that I can maximize the keywording done on import. I sort and edit images, process the selects and export them as 16-bit ProPhoto RGB Tiff files. Once I have processed and exported the selects I continue working them up in Photoshop if they need extra attention. I generally leave the images in Lightroom for about a month then I delete them so the Lightroom cache doesn’t get too big. If at a later date I need to rework an image I can import it into Lightroom again and since I have my preferences set to export XMP sidecar files I can start working up the image as it was previously processed.

Because I don’t do a lot of in-house printing I seldom use the Print module in Lightroom but have found it to be a great asset for creating contact sheets for submissions to clients or punching out a batch of images for an athlete or model. These days most of my image submissions are low resolution jpeg’s sent via FTP or online lightboxes. Lightroom’s Web module gives you quite a few options for creating custom web galleries which can help differentiate yourself from other photographers, plus you can even upload web galleries to your website without leaving Lightroom. I have been using the Slideshow module in Lightroom for all of my workshop slideshows since Lightroom became a beta download last year. All of the modes are useful, it is up to the photographer to pick and choose what works for them. I’m sure my workflow will change as Lightroom improves but for now it is what it is. Adobe has left the door wide open for after market plug-ins and I am sure we’ll be seeing quite a few very useful plug-ins in the near future, many of which will certainly alter my workflow.

Adios, Michael Clark

This is funny. You see 14 logos that could come from either a studio or a salon. Your mission: Separate the software from the hair care.

I got 13 out of 14 on my first try, then dropped to 12 out of 14 while second-guessing one of my answers. How about you?

(Thanks to Doug Wyatt.)

“It’s the photographer that takes the picture, not the camera”

This is a very popular saying, and a lot of people agree with it ….. but I’m going to play devil’s advocate and take the opposite opinion tonight.

Some people take the saying one step further and say that you can hand a cheap camera to a good photographer and he or she will come back with beautiful shots … but you cannot hand an amateur $10,000 of camera equipment and expect the same results. There is certainly some logic to that statement but I don’t agree 100% with it.

Yes, it’s true that the photographer is the one that sees the image before him or her and recognizes it’s artistic value and decides to take the photo, how to compose it, what angle to shoot at, etc. … but I think the camera and all it’s accessories do make a huge difference.

I’ve been a photography hobbyist since my childhood … but when I got very serious about digital photography many years ago I decided to look at my budget and get the best equipment that I could afford and work with it and develop my skills until I was making the most of the equipment. I think this approach has worked well for me .. it’s made me more serious about my photography and made me more eager to learn and get the most out of my equipment. I’m not sure I’d be where I am today in my photography education if I’d bought a point-and-shoot camera instead of the fairly high-end (at the time, for my budget) Olympus DSLR. Since then I switched to Canon cameras and every upgrade brings me better and better images. Sure, I’m learning more and becoming a better photographer, but with every upgrade in hardware (especially quality glass) I’m seeing big improvements in image quality.

A lot of this argument also has to do with the type of photos you take. If you want to take sports photos you need a good quality DSLR that can take at least 5 frames per second and keep that rate up for a while and you need some really good long glass. A nature photographer on a hike in the local nature preserve will probably come back with some great photos even if he or she uses a pocket sized point-and-shoot, but take a look at the sidelines of the next football game or car race you watch and you’ll see a whole bunch of high-dollar, long white lenses.

So … is it the photographer or the camera that takes the picture? I think both.

…Discuss…

Until next time,

Keep shooting.

Allen Rockwell
Allen Rockwell Photography

One of the standard first operations that you might perform on a photograph is to apply auto-levels. Aperture makes this easy, and it’s become almost a reflexive action for me. Usually, I almost use the Luminance auto-levels tool as that fixes up levels without affecting the overall color balance of the photograph. However, there are lots of situations where you have a photograph with a color cast and want to quickly remove it. In many cases, using the RGB auto-levels tool is just the ticket.

For example, I’m going to show you an aerial photograph I shot recently on a trip. This is how it looks in Aperture on import with no adjustments made to it:

Welcome to this week’s edition of Friday Napster Freebies. These un-DRMed MP3 files are free for a limited time and can be downloaded from just about any country. Enjoy!

“The Chase” by Original Recipe
Their formula is simple: Go to the record shop and purchase the most ridiculous records you can find from the $1 bin, go back to the “studio,” drink a little too much, and sample them. Here’s a fine example of this drunken technique from their debut Noisette.

“Beesting” by Buildings Breeding
What started off as an experiment and a farce on MySpace became the “local indie-pop supergroup” of Davis, CA, due to their well-written tunes and subtle musical accents. Today’s download is from their self-titled debut.

“Assisted Living” by Clair De Lune
Known for their contrast of beautiful songwriting and furious energy, this quintet from Minneapolis has just released Assisted Living, an album that has been described as “full of beautiful cacophony and sentimental anger.”

“Song of Yesterday” by Alexa Ray Joel
Being the daughter of a pop-star dad and supermodel mom can’t be easy. However, blessed with the gift of perfect pitch and encouragement from parents Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, she’s following her dreams. Today’s download is an original tune from her Sketches EP.

“Leaving the Nest” by Benjy Ferree
After a failed attempt at an acting career in Hollywood, this Washington, D.C. bartender was accosted by Fugazi’s Brendan Canty, who convinced him to pursue music and later produced the EP Leaving the Nest.

“Katie Cruel” by Karen Dalton
The late folk-blues songstress was a favorite of Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, and others. Dylan said she “had a voice like Billie Holiday and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed.” This track is from her only fully realized studio album, In My Own Time, finished in 1971.

“Nothing” by Sounds Like Violence
Phrases like “mind blowing” and “positively magnificent” have been used to describe the long-awaited debut by these hard-rocking Swedes. Hear for yourself with this track from With Blood on My Hands.

Thanks to 12MB RAW file sizes and the sheer joy of taking pictures, my Aperture libraries get big fast. I toss 120 GB hard drives in my saddle bag like sandwiches in a lunch box. We all know that you can switch among your Aperture library containers by choosing the one you want in Preferences, then restarting Aperture. But who has time for that? You can simply double-click on the Library container you want, and Aperture launches with those images available.

I realize this is deathly simple. But I’m still running into folks who don’t know it…

Now that we have finally made it to the “final” version of Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom, I think it is about time to say a few words about the all important graphic user interface and what it means to the end user. Admittedly most users do not sit in front of their computers and ask themselves what they think about the user interface of a particular application, but they will instinctively decide whether or not they will use an application depending on how much they like it.

Since I was basically computer illiterate before the Macintosh came on the scene, my first experiences with computer software were early versions of MacWrite, MacPaint and MacDraw. These applications required no instructions whatsoever to use and instilled in me an appreciation for intuitive software that still exists today.

Many software developers and an even greater number of software users at that time, insisted that simple software was software that had limited functionality, that real software had to be difficult to learn and to use. This kind of thinking is unfortunately still the norm with most software developers and also has the majority of computer users fooled into accepting software, that is sometimes so unnecessarily complex and difficult to use that it becomes in the end almost unusable.

An unfortunate current day example is Adobe’s own Photoshop software. When it first came out it was actually a fairly simple paint program (which could handle millions of colors), but over the years it has become a jumbled mess of added on functions that only a software engineer, or Photoshop instructor, can truly appreciate. Photoshop is still a great and indispensable application for photographers and graphic artists, but badly in need of a visit to a GUI fat farm for a complete rehab.

Lightroom is in many ways the opposite of Photoshop, it is an application with a singular purpose, taking care of your digital images and presenting them in their best light. The process is broken down into three main areas, importing and organizing in the library module, processing in the develop module, and sharing as a slide show, print or website, in those three related modules.

The extremely simple and intuitive user interface of Lightroom is what hooked most early users of the Beta versions of Lightroom, and it is what will make the final release version a big hit with photographers world wide.

Annoyed by the handling noise my pocket voice recorder picks up, I bought some external mics last fall. Not only did the noise disappear, the recordings also gained much more bass and stereo depth.

The mics I got were Sound Professionals SP-TFB-2s, which someone recommended in this field-recording forum. Interestingly, the TFB-2s are designed to fit in your ears, using the shape of your outer ears and head to create a binaural image. When I wear them, people just assume I’m wearing ear buds, which is great for covert recording.

The TFB-2 mics, with and without optional windscreen. Installing them in your ears takes some practice and a mirror at first.

The mics use an omnidirectional pattern, which produces a very spacious sound, but picks up lots of reverberation indoors. You can hear the effect in this recording of metronomes at the NAMM musical instrument show. The first part of the recording uses the voice recorder’s built-in mics. Then I switch to the in-ear mics.

• Metronomes (MP3)

Here’s another before-and-after example—a bagpipe troupe from the opening day at NAMM. You can hear the drums overwhelm the voice recorder’s automatic gain control, but the difference in frequency response and imaging is obvious.

• Bagpipes with Onboard Mics (340KB MP3)
• Bagpipes with TFB-2 Mics (948KB MP3)

I put some more TFB-2 examples in the Digital Media Insider podcast about portable recorders, including one recording I made outdoors, where I think these mics work best.

I got the beige color; the mics are also available in black.

What happy recording discoveries have you made?

Can Someone Please Explain To Me Again Why I Can’t Loop An MP3 File!?

When I sat down to write Part 2 of my rant, I discovered it had been 7 years to the day since my article “Songs in the Key of Beatnik” was published (Electronic Musician, Feb 2000 issue), and amazingly enough, you can still find it online. Even more ironically, the title of the song being described is “every seven years” … that’s kinda trippy, man! :)

In the article, I report in great detail what I went through to create a 3.5 minute song, with vocals by Roberta Donnay, in RMF format, using only 450Kb. The whole “internet audio” thing was just getting started, and a 56k modem was then considered ’speedy’. The technology I was using for the article was so cutting edge, I had to spend an entire paragraph explaining to my readers just exactly what an MP3 was. And then I go on to describe how to make a custom Steinway RMF instrument using MPEG-compressed looped samples …

Woah! Back up there a second, what did he say? Looped MP3 files? I thought you couldn’t do that!?

One of the features on our new Inside Lightroom site will be excerpts from the upcoming book Photoshop Lightroom Adventure by Mikkel Aaland. Each self-contained piece will give you handy insight into a specific area of Lightroom to help get you up and running. The first of these is a bird’s-eye overview of the Lightroom Modules.

As part of his process for working on the book, Mikkel assembled a team of top-notch photographers and launched a photographic adventure in Iceland to see how Lightroom worked in the field in real time. The results will be featured in the book, and you can get a sneak peak at the beautiful images in these excerpts. You also get to benefit from all that real world photographers’ experience and discovery, a popular and useful feature of Mikkel’s digital photography books.

Some members of the Lightroom Adventure team captured in the Library module (clockwise from the left: Derrick Story, Angela Drury, Martin Sundberg, Peter Krogh, Melissa Gaul, Russell Brown, John Isaac, John McDermott, Mikkel Aaland, and Addy Roff). Photo by Mikkel Aaland.

About five years ago, when I first started flirting with digital image capture I quickly realized that the cameras, while not perfect worked quite well. In comparison, it was the software side of the equation that needed a lot of help. And even though there were a few players in the software industry with viable products to process RAW images none of them were all that fast, powerful or intuitive. Hence, the lure to switch to digital wasn’t very strong. There was poor resolution and painfully slow digital workflows to contend with. For those of us that had been shooting film our entire careers, we were waiting for software that would work like our light tables and a good loupe. We needed a digital workflow that allowed us to edit hundreds and sometime thousands of images produced on a shoot with the same efficiency we could on the light table. Well, it has been a much longer wait than I would have expected but we finally have what we’ve been waiting for and its name is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

While Lightroom may not work exactly like the old light table workflow it isn’t far off and the control we now have over our images is far beyond anything we could have dreamed of even a decade ago. Photographers are rejoicing in the streets - or at least they should be. A large part of the wait is the fact that computers are far more powerful today than they were even a few years ago. With faster computers, efficient software and high-resolution digital cameras, we now have tools that far exceed the quality of 35mm film.

So is Lightroom what we’ve been waiting for? For many photographers the answer will be yes. There are many professional photographers; myself included that switched to a workflow using Adobe Lightroom even while it was in Beta stage. Some of the biggest struggles I had with other workflows are easily handled by Lightroom and save me significant amounts of time parked in front of the computer. Besides providing a more efficient workflow, Lightroom is also a known quantity and easily adapted for anyone who has used an Adobe Camera Raw and CS2 workflow - which is a large percentage of professional photographers. Because I don’t have to learn a whole new piece of software and because I already have a good feel for a large percentage of the sliders in Lightroom it makes for an easy transition. That in itself is a huge time saver and is perhaps one of the biggest selling points for Lightroom. That isn’t to say there is nothing new to learn about a Lightroom workflow or using it to process your digital images. There are some significant differences that will have to be learned but they are an evolution of the controls we are already familiar with and that only makes it easier to craft the final image.

As an example, one step in my workflow where Lightroom saves amazing amounts of time is figuring out which images are tack sharp and which aren’t. With my old workflow this task could take ridiculous amounts of time no matter which software I used. With Lightroom, after importing my images, rendering the standard previews and the 1:1 previews I can zip through the images at 100% about as fast as I can push the arrow key. Taking the time to let Lightroom render the 1:1 previews is a key step in any workflow using this software. Once the 1:1 previews are built, the editing process can fly (with a decently fast computer - most of my critical work is done on a G5 tower and a calibrated and profiled Apple Cinema Display).

Is there room for improvement in Lightroom Version 1.0? Of course there is. But, because Adobe has used a public beta program to get feedback for almost a full year, Lightroom has been dialed in like few other Version1.0 software programs. Lightroom has allowed me to concentrate on photography again. It has simplified my workflow and provides a user interface that is intuitive and powerful. That is progress.

I’ll get more specific on how I use Lightroom and how it has streamlined my workflow in future posts.

Adios, Michael Clark

One of the most daunting steps in most photographers’ workflow is to go through the pictures after a shot and select and rate photos. Often photographers take few dozens or hundreds of photographs in a shoot and just go quickly through the photos and work on a few and export and after that don’t touch the other photos. Therefore the star rating system is very helpful and now it is one of the most vital steps in my workflow and I’m going to talk a little bit about how I go about rating my photos.

What I do when I have imported my photos is to switch to the loupe view and go through the pictures and give the pictures which are keepers one star and don’t give stars to pictures I’m going to throw away. When I have finished going through the pictures I sometimes throw right away the unrated pictures but usually I wait a few days or weeks before I thrash them.

After this step I then filter the pictures by one star and above and go through them again in the loupe view and upgrade the best pictures to two stars. Then I repeat this step for the two star pictures (change the filter to two stars or more) and upgrade the best photos to three stars.

After these steps I have my photos rated from 1-3 stars along with the pictures I want to trash. The beauty of this method is that I don’t have to select for each picture trash, 1, 2 or 3 stars but do this by iteration which in my opinion is much easier process. Also I sometimes wait for one day before upgrading to two and three stars and then I’m fresher and more distant from the shoot itself and therefore my better judgments on the ratings.

I don’t use the 4 and 5 stars in my daily ratings as suggested by Peter Krogh in his excellent book The DAM Book. He suggests that 4 stars should be used for your portfolio images and the five stars should be used later for something special. I agree with this method and use 4 stars for portfolio pictures and haven’t used the 5 stars yet.

After the rating process I usually start by developing the three star images in the Development module and then develop 1 and 2 star images by batch processing them but work in more detail on the three star images.

KIGALI, RWANDA–From what I’ve seen of this country, like so many places in Africa, it’s beautiful with lush vegetation, rolling hills framed by mountains and active volcanoes. But there is also poverty and the burden of HIV/AIDS and the legacy of the Genocide.

The Rwandan Landscape

Though much time has passed since the Genocide in 1994–that horrific time resonates throughout this country, as we make our way to the places that Dr. James Orbinski, the former head of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of MSF in 1999, had been. We meet with survivors and talk about his and their experiences.

Dr. James Orbinski visits a Genocide Memorial where the mummified remains of many who were systematically killed in the area, are kept in rooms as a ghostly reminder for the world to see.

Photographically, Rwanda is not an easy place to be in many respects. Given the history, the people are understandably edgy and suspicious when it comes to cameras, and often savvy enough to ask for money. The government also keeps a tight reign on foreign media.

I have brought with me my 2ghz MacBook Pro, with two GBs of Ram and 100GB drive. I had brought two 120GB pocket drives, one Smart Disk Firewire, the other a Western Digital USB-2 that I picked up for the bargain price of $105. I have also have a bunch of blank DVD’s and a few blank CD’s.

The above storage would have been enough for my three-week journey, until my Firewire drive went “missing” on day 1, (I may have left it in the airplane seat pocket- DUMB); but stuff happens.

So I had to re-adjust my strategies. I decided to shoot just raw, not raw and JPEG, which I have done in the past. With Aperture on this shoot, there was no need, especially with drive space being so tight thanks to my carelessness.

I started out ingesting my 12.2 Mega-pixel D2X raw files into a managed-Aperture library on the laptop. But it was clear after a few days, that space was quickly becoming a problem, as was finding time to edit and deal with a storage capacity quickly filling to the brim.

At first I decided to export my projects to the external drive, and delete the project on the laptop to make space. I kept each project to about 4.5gigs max, so I could back up to DVD, which worked–but if I wanted to see the stuff in Aperture, I would have to import the project back inside the library–which was time consuming and didn’t make sense.

So I brought all the projects back into an Aperture Managed library on the USB2 external drive, which took time, but was a one-time deal that gave me instant access to the whole shoot.

I have to say; I was pleasantly surprised with Aperture’s performance on USB-2 bus- powered drive. With all the talk about using Firewire drives for maximizing speed, I didn’t expect this drive to perform as well as it did.

I then finished editing. For this shoot, I had a three-pronged editing system. Losing a hard drive meant space was at a premium. So the first thing I did, which is normal in my workflow, was to identify the rejects and delete them. I was more ruthless than normal because of the circumstances, deleting a few more than I may have in a perfect situation at home.

Snapshots of victims are on display at the Museum in Kigali

I then rated the rest. One star was for the personal shots of the crew and people we met along the way. Two-stars were for shots of the crew and set-up, these production stills are an important part of this assignment. Three-star images were reserved for images of Dr. Orbiniski, which would be used for publicity, the DVD cover etc., as well as the photographs I would use for my own purposes.

I then created smart albums for each of the three different ratings, and the images in these albums were the ones I backed up to DVD, and backed-up again into a much smaller managed-Aperture library of selects on my laptop.

I created a new project called Africa 2007 3-Star Selects, went to the three star smart album, selected all 1258 selects and dragged them into the new project. I then exported the new project onto the desktop (about 20 minutes) and imported the project into the other managed Aperture library on the laptop’s hard-drive. I created new projects for the 1-Star and 2-Star Smart Albums and did the same to back them up onto the laptop’s managed Aperture library.

If space becomes an issue before the shoot ends, I will go back to my unrated images and delete more.

As far as workflow, my whole goal in the field was to edit as best I could, ingest with as much metadata and key-wording as time permitted; but most importantly–back stuff up. There will be time back home to finesse and add and correct metadata, but getting the stuff back safely is foremost on my mind. The trip is near the halfway point and my managed library is 61.62GB large.

In the old days, there was much anxiety traveling with bricks of film and bringing back the exposed film, worrying about security, X-Rays, loss or damage. In the digital age, there’s still some anxiety, but with prudent back up and care–there’s less worry.

I am really enjoying using Aperture on the road. The laptop, although not the latest, greatest, fastest –is working fast enough, particularly with a USB-2 Managed library! This was not the way I planned to work, but as Tony Soprano says, “you do what you have to do”. More on my African adventure next post.

* I haven’t had time or a good connection to answer comments from last post, will do when I can!

Apple has just announced a series of free workshops aimed at wedding and event photographers. The workshops will focus on Aperture, Apple hardware, and will feature presentations by professional photographers who are yet to be named.

Each attendee will also receive a free Aperture tutorial DVD. The workshops are free and available on a first come first serve basis. To register, simply go to the website, select the workshop you would like to attend and fill out the form.

I am already thinking about going to the Miami workshop. Apple’s free workshops are usually pretty cool. Back when I lived in DC I attended one, which starred Vincent Laforet. It was exciting enough to see some of his work up on the big screen, but he really sold me on Aperture and it was a pretty good show all around. If you are near one of the cities where a workshop is being held, I highly recommend attending.

For more information and to register for a workshop, click here.

We shoot still images for lots of reasons, of course. At different times, I’ve been hired to shoot for the usual print or web projects, but I’ve also had to shoot images for inclusion as stills in video projects, and as plates in complex special effects workflows. Aperture 1.0 wasn’t really practical for some of these types of jobs, because it was impossible to access images in your Aperture library from other applications. For example, if you want to use an image as a plate in a special effects composite in Adobe After Effects, or as a texture map in a 3D program, having the image locked up in your Aperture library can be a hassle.

Aperture 1.5 offered a handy solution to these problems in the form of referenced images. Becuase you can keep images stored outside of your Aperture library, you can easily access them from other applications. Aperture 1.5 also introduced a new Export plug-in architecture that gives you single-click exporting using specific settings and functions.

Connected Flow has released a very well-designed Export plug-in that allows you to export images from Aperture directly into a Final Cut Pro sequence. Select images in an Aperture project and choose the Aperture to Final Cut Pro export plugin, and Aperture will automatically place your images in the Final Cut project and sequence of your choice, using any of the export presets that you’ve defined.

Connected Flow has added some really nice extra functionality, though. You can specify a transition for your images, and the resulting Final Cut timeline will automatically place that transition type between images. You can specify the duration of each image, and pick a file to use as an audio track for the sequence.

In other words, with a single click, you can create an entire Final Cut video slideshow from your Aperture images, complete with transitions and audio. While you can create slideshows with audio within Aperture, the ability to export to Final Cut means you can now easily incorporate Aperture slideshows in video projects, export them to DVD video, or videotape.

Kudos to Connected Flow for making a great, free product!

A nice treat from the folks at Zune: 30-odd free unDRMed MP3s ready for download, including tracks from Wierd Al, Barenaked Ladies and the Shins. Perfect for your iPod, Zune or other MP3 player.

Last week, I wrote about color management. This prompted several e-mails from readers who need help using ICC profiles.

Step one, is to acquire the profile. If you have your own colorimeter, then you can build your own profiles. If you use a standard inkjet printer from a major company like Epson or Canon, you will receive profiles with your printer. Lastly, if you work with an outside service such as MPIX, you’ll be able to obtain profiles from the service provider.

But what do you do with these profiles when you get them?

Do you ever wish that you could just quickly look through Library’s Grid view for photos of a particular subject at a particular angle…or even just photos of a particular subject? Then you wouldn’t have to go through dozens or hundreds of pictures when you were just looking for a particular type of thing. Of course, the most common way to take care of that problem is to just drag all the similar pictures into a sequence by “light-tabling” them. To do that, you just click the center of the picture to select it, then drag it next to another similar picture in the grid. Then you Cmd/Ctrl + Select any other pictures you see in that one view of the Grid and drag them next to another of the similar pictures. After repeating that process a few time, you have a group of similar pictures that are all side-by-side.

Trade shows can be murder on your ears. Especially music shows like NAMM, where every booth is trying to out-crank the next. This year, I made two discoveries there, one scary and one pleasing. First, the scary one.

My first stop, at 9:30 on the day the show opened, was at the House Ear Institute booth, where they were giving free hearing screenings. I see this booth at every audio show, but it’s always booked up. This time I got right in, and was sent back to the soundproofed trailer with three other guys. One said he made the booth his first stop at every show.

After peering into our ears with an otoscope, a technician sent us into the next room, where we sat down with headphones and a button. He didn’t explain the test very well, but I soon realized the goal was to click the button whenever I heard a series of three beeps, which played back at different pitches and levels in first one ear, then the other.

The headphones, which looked like something out of a grade-school library, didn’t fit too well. And the trailer wasn’t soundproofed enough to keep out the piano demo in the next booth (coincidentally playing the same frequency range as the test tones). So I wasn’t confident in my guesses, but I figured the test would still tell me something.

This electron microscope image of an inner ear shows the hair bundles projecting from the surface of the cell. (Courtesty HEI.)

Leaving the trailer, I received a graph of my results. As I stared at the slight dip in the 4–6kHz range (still within the normal range for my age), the guy next to me said, “Want to see a bad one?”

His graph looked like a ski slope. "That’s what 25 years of mixing live bands will do to you," he said, wisfully.

Another guy noted that his hearing performance had actually improved since the previous year. (HEI keeps your results on file so you can compare graphs.) We wondered if he’d taken the test later in the show last year, when his ears had already become fatigued.

Looking back at my graph, my first thought was, “Oh $#!+! My audio career is over if my hearing isn’t perfectly flat.” I wondered wildly if I should reduce the 4–6kHz range in my mixes to compensate for the deficiency. I later learned it doesn’t work that way:

“In sensory hearing loss from age or exposure to noise, the apparent loudness does not shift with thresholds,” writes Dr. Halpin. “You just lose the quiet tones. To adjust mix EQ based on thresholds is not a valid concept. Instead, you should be thinking that when it sounds good to you, it will sound good to the audience.”

Which brings me to the happy hearing discovery of the show. In his booth, sound designer Gary Garritan was demonstrating his new software synthesizers using Direct Sound Extreme Isolation headphones. Designed for drummers, these hearing protectors with integrated speakers reduce ambient noise up to 28dB. Putting them on, I was enveloped in an oasis of quiet. It was hard to ignore the bear-like grip on my skull, but reviews say it relaxes over time. They reminded me of some industrial ear muffs I wore while mowing lawns as a teenager — very likely the reason my hearing hasn’t deteriorated more.

The Extreme Isolation headphones are now on my shopping list, and I know what my first stop will be at NAMM 2008.

There’s a fantastic “must read” article gracing the cover of this month’s Fast Company (February 2007) entitled “Music’s Secret Money Machine” talking about a company called Music Today that connects artists and fans — and is making a boatload of money for artists. Artists like John Legend, Gwen Stefani, Dave Matthews Band, and hundreds of others are taking control over their relationship with their fans in ways that are not only bringing them closer to those fans — but are also bringing the artists additional revenues.

From the article: “They (the artists) found that the Internet has become not only a channel for distributing music but one for insinuating bands into the lives of their most enraptured fans. They found that the efficiencies of the Web are such that for very little cost, an artist can build his own online operation and outsource everything, from peddling “merch” to boosting the fan club to ticketing and marketing. And they found a full-service company that had built an infrastructure so vast and so efficient that no one could rival it.” That company is Music Today, started by a forward-thinking long-time artist manager named Coran Capshaw (Dave Matthews Band, Phish & more). The industry no longer hinges on the CD in terms of revenues — there’s a vast fortune to be made in touring, merchandising, and in fan subscriptions. And Music Today is leading the charge with a cost-effective machine and infrastructure that enables artists to take control of these facets of their career (and much more) in a turnkey fashion.

If you’re interested in new models of commerce for artists, you’ll want to read this article in full; Music Today is miles ahead of anyone in this space — and this article does a great job of providing specifics.

Last week I talked about batch changing your images date/time stamp using the Metadata Batch Change dialog. This week I want to explore a few more options available to you in the batch change dialog.

There are several cases where you might want to batch change the metadata of many images at once. Perhaps you did an import in the field and forgot (or didn’t have time) to type in the keywords, captions, credit, copyright information or other data that is typical to all the images imported. Or perhaps you did enter all that info but misspelled a keyword or just made a typo in one field or another.

With the Batch Change dialog, available through the Metadata menu, you can either replace or add to (append) data to the data that is already there. In the case of a misspelled keyword you might want to replace the data, in the case of forgotten data you may want to append the data.

Remember when using the replace option you are replacing all the data in that field … so if you misspelled one keyword and want to replace it you will need to type all the keywords in the field or you will be replacing all the data with only what you have typed in the keywords field.

Hopefully this tip will help you save a lot of time editing individual image metadata.

Until next time,

Keep shooting.

Allen Rockwell
Allen Rockwell Photography

Long time Aperture users might want to double-check the Raw Fine Tune panel in the Adjustments HUD before printing and other critical output. Why? Well, as I learned the other day, there is sometimes a big difference between Fine Tune 1.0 and 1.1

This issue came up for me recently when printing large format on an HP Z2100. I noticed some funkiness in the processing of Raw files from my Canon 5D. After a little investigation, I saw that this older image has “1.0″ selected under Raw Fine Tune instead of 1.1, I reprocessed the image with 1.1, and noticed a big improvement.

I’m sure the difference varies from image to image, but if you’ve been using Aperture for a while, you might want to double-check Raw Fine Tuning to make sure you’re getting the best processing possible.

Welcome to another edition of Friday Napster Freebies. These un-DRMed MP3 files are free for a limited time and can be downloaded from just about any country. Enjoy!

“Spring Hall Convert” by Deerhunter
This Atlanta-based psych-pop collective has endured financial strain, death, and lineup changes, but has persevered and come out the other side with a rocking sophomore album, Cryptograms.

“Seasons” by Julie Sokolow
Using only her voice, a cheap acoustic guitar, and the built-in microphone on her computer, this Pittsburgh singer-songwriter put together Something About Violins, a collection of eerie lo-fi productions reminiscent of Cat Power and Julie Doiron.

“P-Body” by Sean Price
From the Boot Camp Clik, the self-proclaimed “brokest rapper you know” is back with Jesus Price Superstar, featuring more of the self-deprecating, knucklehead rhymes that have made him one of the more entertaining MCs to bless the mic.

“Breaking Glass” by Uncut
Originally a dance-rock outfit, this Canadian foursome traded their computers for guitars and have toured with current heavies including Metric, Sloan, and the Walkmen. This track is from their latest album, Modern Currencies.

“Soul Bird” by Jackie Mittoo
This reggae legend recorded this track in the early ’70s after leaving his native Kingston for Toronto. The album to which it belongs, Wishbone, branches out into funk and soul and has finally been re-released. Enjoy.

“Altar of Goat Skulls (EXPLICIT)” by 7000 Dying Rats
You can’t really call them a group, since their lineup “seems to be dictated by whoever we happen to be drinking with at the time” according to singer and multi-instrumentalist Toney Vast-Binder, the collective’s ringleader. Today’s grindcore excursion is from their newest album, Season in Hell.

“Thick Ropes (EXPLICIT)” by Planet Asia
Hailing from Fresno, California, Planet Asia has become one of hip-hop’s hardest-working yet underrated MCs. With a large collection of independent singles and albums already under his belt, he worked with producer Evidence (of Dilated Peoples) on his new album The Medicine, featuring today’s free download.

The fever I got is of the Analog Modular kind. There’s a lot of that going around–a wonderful resurgence in hands-on, knobs-and-patch-cables, Not For Any Reason(R), synthesis.

It has been a mad scramble as usual to pack for my trip to Africa. I always fantasize about being a James-Bond-like-traveler; relaxed, in a tux with martini in hand, bored and checking my watch to see if it’s time to leave yet.

Of course the reality is more from the “chicken-without-a head” school, never enough time to do the 134 things to do on the list, high stress levels and very little sleep. That’s just the way it seems to work out mostly.

But now, the moment of Zen–the plane is in the air and I am tapping on these keys blogging for Inside Aperture from the crammed middle seat on a seven-hour flight to Zurich, en route to Rwanda. Whatever I didn’t get done doesn’t matter; I turn my attention to the assignment at hand.

I’m working as a stills photographer for a documentary team focusing on Dr. James Orbinski, the former head of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of MSF in 1999. We are going back with him, retracing his steps and seeing how things have changed.

We will be gone for about three weeks and I get to test out Aperture on the road for the first time. I like to travel light, but in the end, I never travel as light as I would like. Here’s my equipment list:

Camera and lenses: Nikon D2x Camera with 17-55mm 2.8 lens- my main combo. I love this lens and use it for the majority of my work. I like to be close to my subjects, which let’s me capture more intimate moments I wouldn’t get otherwise.

The Nikon D200 Body with 18-200mm VR lens is my backup. I love the smaller size of the D200 body. It’s important for me to have a back up lens, in case my 17-55 ever drops or goes away. Though I prefer not to shoot long; it is nice to have the “long lensability” in a short lens package. The 18-200mm has an incredible range and though this is the first time I will try it, I have heard great things. Extra camera batteries, the correct electric-plug converters and chargers all are in the bag.

I have learned to use flash less frequently, preferring to take advantage of the wonderful low light capture of DSLR sensors. I try not to raise my ISO above 400 generally–but when light is low and uneven, there are times when flash is the best compromise.

I have a Nikon SB 800 flash that I use off camera connected with a SC-29 cord, which allows me to use TTL flash in a much more natural way. I bought one of the Gary Fong light diffusers for it, and though it’s a bit big and clunky, it does a very nice job of softening the light–and when it’s in the backpack I can store extra batteries inside it.

I’m a firm believer in shooting after the sun goes down, capturing mood and atmosphere in the landscape. For this trip, I decided to try out the “Gorilla Pod”, a small, light bendable tripod that should prove to be a good anchor for longer exposures.

I fit it all into a smallish backpack. I vowed after turning 40, that all my shoes would be slip-ons and all my cases would have wheels, but I make exceptions when traveling to Africa. I don’t want to check my equipment as baggage so I make sure my backpack is small enough to fit under the seat, if it’s too big for the overhead compartments of a small plane. True to my shoe philosophy however, my Blundstone boots are comfy, slip on, look fancy enough for upscale occasions and are rugged and dry in the mud and the grass. I have a Kata raincover that lets me shoot in the pouring rain while keeping the camera dry.

This trip is taking us to Rwanda, Kenya and maybe Somalia and Belgrade–and there may not always be access to electricity. So having a Lexar 8GB 133xcard and two 4GB cards will allow me to shoot lots of raw images to bring into Aperture, without having to download as often. I have three 2GB 80X cards from my last trip, which I also brought.

I know the argument against putting all your eggs in one basket with larger cards, but I have had such great experience with the Lexar cards, that I’m ready to take a leap of faith with the larger ones. The last time I used my Epson P2000 Viewer for downloading in the field was my last trip to Africa, so we’ll see if I bring it into service this trip. It’s comforting to know that if the computer is out of power or something goes wrong, there’s still a way to clear the cards safely.

I have always taken a recorder of sorts with me on long shooting trips, but this time I have gotten serious. The last trip to Africa, the D2X memo feature, which allows you 60-second recordings and download as .wav files, came in handy for interviews, notes and collecting sound and music from the field. This time I will try out an Edirol R09 Recorder for gathering field audio and two Lexar 133x 1 GB SD cards to capture it all. From all I’ve read, this one is the photographer’s choice.

I had my camera’s sensors cleaned before the trip, and though I’ve never cleaned a sensor myself (I shouldn’t be afraid, but I am)–I have never had trouble with dust on the sensors, leaving my lenses fixed on the bodies all the time. But I did bring the sensor cleaning swabs and liquid in case of emergency.

A pocket USB Drive on a keychain can come in handy also to keep scans of my passport and vital information in case papers are lost. 32 Duracell Ultra Digital AA Batteries should be enough to power the flash and Edirol recorder.

North American cell phones can cost a fortune when used overseas, but the Motorola Razor V3 Phone can be used worldwide. Picking up a SIM card in many African countries means cheap cell phone rates and people back home can reach you on their dime.

I hope to have more on my computer set-up and using Aperture in Africa in my next couple of blogs, time and Internet connections permitting.

Strong Work

A powerful and riveting look at the war-torn African Republic of Congo, by Marcus Bleasdale.